LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Shelf £&£L 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



I 



THE GHILDHOOD OF JESUS 



AND OTHER SERMONS, 

y 

By ADOLPHE MONOD. 



Translated by Rev. J. H. MYERS. 




BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 
Congregational ^uooag-^cbool anb Jubliaijing Satiety. 




Copyright, 1889, by 

Congregational. Sunday-School and Publishing 
Society. 



Electrotyped and Printed by 
Samuel Usher, 171 Devonshire Street, Boston, Mass. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



BY THE TRANSLATOR. 



These sermons, by the most eminent French 
preacher of his day, are offered to the public in 
an English dress, from a strong conviction that 
their discussion of fundamental topics is, in a 
remarkable degree, both felicitous and instruct- 
ive, and has special adaptations to the needs of 
our country and our times. 

To Monod the highest place in sacred oratory 
has been conceded by the most competent 
judges. In speaking of the brilliant and solid 
fame acquired by the ablest pulpit orator and 
divine of Holland, Dr. Schaff compares him to 
Adolphe Monod, " when he stood at the head of 
the Protestant pulpit of Paris and of France." 
The late Abbe Lacordaire, unequaled in pop- 
ularity as an orator among the Eomish priests 
of France, remarked to his friends after hear- 
ing Monod: '* We are all children in compari- 
son." 



4 



Introductory Note. 



Our own James W. Alexander, of rare eru- 
dition and accomplishment, knew Monod at 
Paris thirty years ago, in the ripe fullness of 
his fame and his usefulness, and described him 
as ' fc the most remarkable mixture of sweetness 
and intense solemnity." Alluding to Monod' s 
sermon, k< God is Love," he observed, k< It was 
an hour to be remembered for a life-time." And, 
after hearing the ablest men of the day in Great 
Britain, Dr. Alexander seems disposed to regard 
Adolphe Monod as the nr&t among European 
preachers. 

If there were occasion to justify such opin- 
ions, one need only refer to Monod's sermons 
on 44 The Living Word" (he delighted ever to 
extol and glorify our adorable Lord), " The 
Vocation of the Church," and " God Demand- 
ing the Heart of Man"; or to the two series 
published in this country twenty years since, 
one on <k The Temptation of Christ," and the 
other (five sermons) on u Saint Paul." 

In his writings judicious critics have recog- 
nized some of the highest qualities of the Eng- 
lish and Continental pulpits in rare combina- 
tion : a penetrating analysis and thorough discus- 
sion (as in the best American sermons) of the 
subjects handled ; profound love to men and to 



Introductory Note, 



5 



the Bedeemer ; simplicity with fervor of expres- 
sion; together with that unstudied grace and 
finish of form which characterize the most illus- 
trious French preachers. 

Of the three discourses contained in this 
volume, addressed to" the friends of education 
and to children, and delivered on successive 
anniversary celebrations in Paris, it is only just 
to say that, besides a deep knowledge of the 
human heart and the tender affection of the 
faithful Christian teacher, they evince a thought- 
ful appreciation of the nature of a true educa- 
tion and a cordial sympathy with childhood as 
well as adult age. The sermon on " The Child- 
hood of Jesus; or, Christian Education," is 
often referred to, as by Lange and others; 
Canon Farrar, in his delightful Life of Christ, 
places it among his principal authorities. 

The two sermons to children breathe a hope- 
ful and cheerful tone with regard to the young ; 
but they uphold also with great earnestness 
and force the ancient lesson of obedience to 
rightful authority, a lesson nowhere — not even 
in France itself — needing to be more pressed 
and urged home than in the domestic, social, 
and civil life of the American people at the 
present time. 



6 Introductory Note. 



The translator, while endeavoring to give a 
fitting form to this little book, has found it a 
pleasant task to prepare for the press other 
discourses by Monod, which will be published 
should a demand for them arise. 

November, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



The Childhood of Jesus; or, Christian 

Education 11 

The Child at the Passover 61 

Like Child, Like Man 127 



THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS; 

OR, 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 



And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled 
with wisdom : and the grace of God was upon him. Now 
his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast 
of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they 
went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And 
when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the 
child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and 
his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to 
have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they 
sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And 
when they found him not, they turned back again to 
Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that after 
three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the 
midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them 
questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his 
understanding and answers. And when they saw him, 
they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, 
why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and 
I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, 
How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be 
about my Father's business? And they understood not the 
saying which he spake unto them. And he went down 
with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto 
them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. 
And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour 
with God and man. — Luke 2: 40-52. 



12 



The Childhood of Jesus. 




PROFOUND mystery envelops 
the childhood of Jesus Christ. 
If it is always difficult to rep- 
resent to one's self the Son of God 
"clothed with flesh like unto our sinful 
flesh," it is doubly so to think of him as 
a child growing in body and mind like 
another child. In this gradual develop- 
ment, what part pertains to the Son of 
man, what part to the Son of God? At 
what time, on what occasion, in what 
manner, did there begin in Jesus the 
consciousness of his divine nature and of 
his heavenly mission ? Questions as per- 
plexing as they are delicate, the solution 
of which can not be looked for, at least 
in our present state of being. Adoring in 
silence the holy obscurity of those "secret 
things [which] belong unto the Lord our 
God," we here humbly confine ourselves 
to the practical application of those "re- 
vealed things " which " belong unto us 
and our children. " I desire in the child 



The Childhood of Jesus. 13 

Jesus to seek out the principles which 
should preside over Christian education. 
In every enterprise, the means to be 
adopted are determined by the end had in 
view. You can in no way, then, better 
ascertain how you ought to train up your 
children than by representing to your 
minds that which they ought to become ; 
nor can you in any way better understand 
what they ought to become than by study- 
ing the life of the child Jesus. Such is the 
purpose of the meditation on which I now 
enter ; it corresponds to the task which has 
been assigned me for the day, the encour- 
agement of primary education. Is it less 
in correspondence with a want of your 
own hearts, with a general need of society, 
and with a special need of this generation 
which is tempest-tossed continually, but 
only the more inexorably bound to the 
unchangeable obligations of domestic life ? 
In order to cast anchor in the State, and 
even in the Church, one must know, at 



14 The Childhood of Jesus. 

certain epochs, how to wait; it is the 
sacred privilege of the family never to 
wait. 

When the interest of the subject which 
occupies us is comprehended, and when it 
is felt with the heart of a father or a 
mother, one can not escape from a painful 
surprise on opening the first chapters of 
the Gospels and vainly searching page 
after page for details respecting the child- 
hood of our Lord, upon which it would 
be so profitable, it seems to us, to medi- 
tate and to cause our children to medi- 
tate. One could wish to shake the book, 
that from it there might drop some addi- 
tional narratives of those thirty years 
spent at Nazareth, and to which Saint 
Luke, the only one of the evangelists 
who speaks of them, devotes but twelve 
verses. With what care would a human 
book have shunned a like omission ! 
Among the false gospels (known under 
the name of Apocryphal Gospels) which 



The Childhood of Jesus. 15 

appeared in the first ages of the Church 
was a gospel of the childhood of our 
Saviour, lavish in details concerning the 
child Jesus; but these details were not 
authenticated: they were frequently triv- 
ial or puerile and in fact such as might 
be expected upon such a subject from the 
imagination of man, supplementing the 
silence of the Holy Spirit. Let us recog- 
nize God's Word by this sobriety which 
perplexes us ; and let us be well assured 
that in telling us only a few things con- 
cerning the child Jesus, it has told all 
that it was good for us to know ; nothing 
more, but also nothing less — not one 
word conceded to our curiosity, but not 
one withheld from that "pure heart" 
which "hungers and thirsts after right- 
eousness." Precisely as it is, the narrative 
of the childhood of our Lord furnishes us 
with more than one salutary counsel with 
regard to the education of our children. 
This will be made evident by the lessons 



16 The Childhood of Jesus. 

which we shall presently gather from the 
narrative, and which are far from ex- 
hausting it. 

But before engaging in this examination 
let us pause for a moment to consider a 
previous lesson that is conveyed to us by 
the very silence of Scripture. If it passes 
so rapidly over thirty years in the life of 
our Lord though filling four Gospels with 
the few years that followed, it is doubt- 
less for the reason that there was much 
less to say concerning the one portion 
than concerning the other. It is because 
there was nothing in the childhood of the 
Lord, or even in his youth, of that luster 
which shone out subsequently in his 
authoritative teachings, in the virtue of 
his miracles and in the progress of his 
brief but astonishing history. That lus- 
ter is attributed by the Apocryphal Gospel 
of which I have just spoken, to his child- 
hood, which is there depicted all glowing 
with prodigies and as if encircled by a 



The Childhood of Jesus. 17 

halo of glory ; for the simple narrative of 
the gospel it substitutes a legend, not to 
say a fairy story. And this is quite nat- 
ural in the order of human ideas. Pagan 
antiquity has exhibited Hercules prelud- 
ing his future greatness by stifling two 
serpents in his cradle, and why should not 
He who was soon to heal the sick by the 
^ mere touch of his garment begin his mir- 
acles while hanging on his mother's 
breast ? But " God's thoughts are not 
our thoughts ; " and such a prelude to the 
miracles of Jesus is absolutely wanting in 
the evangelical narrative. Let us learn 
from this that, contrary to human precon- 
ceptions, Jesus when a child belonged to 
his own age. " To every thing there is a 
season, and a time to every purpose under 
the heaven." 

This divine rule which should regulate 
all human affairs presided over the life of 
Jesus. In him nothing was found which 
was not in its place and in its true rela- 



18 The Childhood of Jesus. 

tions ; there was no lack of harmony 
or of equilibrium between the different 
phases of his being ; to his maturity- 
pertained the task of that maturity ; to 
his childhood the cares of childhood, and 
perhaps its pastimes, its sports, and its 
tears. The child Jesus was a child; a 
child like other children, in whom noth- 
ing, either in his deportment, his words, or # 
his works, clearly disclosed to others his 
future mission — perhaps, as yet, nothing 
disclosed it to himself. He was a child 
who was distinguished among his com- 
panions only by the simple and silent ful- 
fillment of the duties of his age, while 
engaged in the occupations pertaining to 
his age. 

A great lesson this with respect to edu- 
cation. Let our children, also, belong to 
their age. Let us take heed lest an impa- 
tient cultivation of their faculties cause 
them to anticipate the development that 
comes with years and thus disturb God's 



The Childhood of Jesus. 19 

order. The mature man who has not 
learnt to " put away childish things " pre- 
sents a humiliating spectacle; but it is 
also an instance of lamentable irregular- 
ity, although it may be an object of ambi- 
tion to more than one father or mother, 
when we see a child who copies manhood 
in his actions and in his language, and 
who aspires to overleap at a bound the 
steps which God has placed in his path- 
way, instead of climbing them one by 
one. Those steps are healthful ; life is 
not discounted with impunity. They are 
healthful for the body, which would suffer 
by a development, premature and dispro- 
portionate, of the intellect. They are 
healthful for the mind, which, like the 
body, has need to strengthen as it grows, 
and is enfeebled by a too rapid growth. 
But they are healthful above all for the 
soul, which we ought jealously to main- 
tain in that tender simplicity so loved by 
the Saviour himself, and which is indeed a 



20 The Childhood of Jesus. 



delightful ornament of childhood, a flower 
which easily fades, and which once faded 
never regains its original hues. A preco- 
cious and brilliant child, quoted every- 
where for a mind above his years, is a sor- 
rowful sight ; sad for others, but especially 
sad for himself. Above his age, do you say 
with pride ? So much the worse. Better 
that he should be of his age, as was the 
child Jesus, for his age is God's time in 
regard to him. Ah ! let not our children 
cause themselves to be spoken of; let there 
be silence observed concerning their child- 
hood, as the gospel keeps silence concerning 
the childhood of Him who was the model 
child ; let them not be taught to think 
themselves to be something and to set 
themselves up as a spectacle to men ! Let 
them grow in the shade, in the sanctuary 
of the family, happily unknown to the 
world, beneath the eye of the Lord and 
for his glory ! And may they be enabled, 
like the child whom Jesus set one day in 



The Childhood of Jesus. 21 

the midst of his apostles, to serve the 
Lord for text and example, showing us 
the spirit of humility in which we ought 
to serve God and receive his word ! 

Let us seek now in the recital of our 
evangelist the characteristic traits by 
which the child Jesus is therein com- 
mended as an example to children ; and 
let us gather from it the spirit in which 
we ought to guide our own children. 

Look first at this picture of his early 
childhood, before he had reached the age 
of twelve years. " And the little 1 child 
grew and waxed strong in spirit, being 
filled with wisdom : and the grace of God 
was upon him." In the beginning of this 
verse, we see the child Jesus developing 
in body and in mind; and the language 
of the evangelist, the same which is used 

1 " Little child," in the French; the Greek word thus ren- 
dered is in our version translated " young child " eight 
times in Matthew ii, where the babe Jesus is spoken of; the 
same word, in the same relation, occurs in Luke 2 : 21, 27, 
and is there rendered " child," in the received English Ver- 
sion.— Tb. 



22 The Childhood of Jesus. 

in speaking of the childhood of John the 
Baptist, has no peculiarity that need de- 
tain us here ; but the sequel casts a pleas- 
ing light upon the character of the divine 
child. 

He was " filled with wisdom : and the 
grace of God was upon him." The wis- 
dom referred to in the passage is not the 
wisdom which is according to this world, 
but the wisdom which is according to 
God. It was neither that proud philoso- 
phy which Greece boasted and which she 
was wont to teach so sedulously to the 
rising generation ; 1 nor those prudential 
maxims of life in which the children of 
the age surpass the children of light; 2 
nor that learning drawn from books 
which studious men amass with so much 
toil ; 3 nor even the speculative knowl- 
edge of God and of the holy mysteries 
of his word. 4 It is that wisdom so often 



1 1 Cor. 1 : 22; 3 : 18-20; Col. 2: 8. 
2 Luke 16 : 8. 



3 Eccles. 12 : 12. 
* 1 Cor. 13 : 2. 



The Childhood of Jesus. 23 



praised in the books of king Solomon, the 
first lesson of which is : " Fear God and 
keep his commandments ; " and which Job 
defines in these terms at the end of a 
wonderful discourse in which he contrasts 
it with the knowledge and the diligence 
of this world: "The fear of the Lord, 
that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil 
is understanding." 1 It is the wisdom of 
piety which puts each thing in its place, 
and which, recognizing the supremacy of 
the Creator over the creature, and of eter- 
nity over time, fastens upon "the one 
thing needful," and 66 seeks first the king- 
dom of God and his righteousness." 

Behold here the humble wisdom with 
which the child Jesus was animated, with 
which he was "filled," like a vase full of 
a precious liquid which pours over the 
sides, and as we ought to be " filled with 
the Holy Spirit," 2 even with "all the 
fulness of God." 3 Try to bring before 

1 Job 28 : 28. 3 Eph. 3 : 19. 

2 Eph. 5:18. 



24 The Childhood of Jesus. 

your minds a young child, walking in the 
fear of God, praying to him with all his 
heart, serving him even in the least 
things, seeking out occasions to commune 
with him ; what other sight could so rest 
the heart and delight the eye ! Such was 
Jesus ; in his childhood you would have 
found the ideal of this picture, height- 
ened by a perfect simplicity. Walking 
thus " with God," " the grace of God was 
upon him," pursues the evangelist ; the 
favor of God rested upon that child-like 
and holy head. God already took delight 
in this child, to whom he was afterwards 
to give this testimony from heaven, " This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased ; " 1 and whose mere presence in 
the midst of men had caused him to 
proclaim at the birth of Jesus : " Good- 
will towards men." Thus the piety of 
the child Jesus toward God, and the 
favor of God toward the child Jesus, 



1 Matt. 3: 17. 



The Qhildhood of Jesus. 25 

constitute the characteristic feature, the 
only feature, to which Saint Luke refers 
in depicting that childhood which was 
appointed to serve for an example to all 
generations. Was there found in the 
child Jesus superior knowledge, remark- 
able aptitude, extraordinary genius ? That 
is possible, but that is not declared to us ; 
all that we know is, that he was a pious 
child, loving God, loved by God. 

Let us open our ears and our hearts, 
Christian parents. Behold here the in- 
struction of instructions, the fundamental 
principle which should be placed at the 
basis of education, and which can not 
be wanting without carrying away every 
thing with it. The wisdom that is ac- 
cording to God, or the favor of God, that 
is to say, piety, a piety that is true, simple, 
living, active, this is the first grace which 
we ought to ask and seek for our chil- 
dren. The first, I say, and not the only 
one. We must assuredly place our chil- 



26 The Childhood of Jesus. 

dren in a condition to "gain their bread 
by the sweat of their brow." Jesus 
Christ doubtless was not unacquainted 
with labor in his childhood, and according 
to a tradition which seems to be confirmed 
by Scripture, 1 he took part, until the day 
of his manifestation unto Israel, in the 
humble occupation of him whom he 
styled his father. We must also cultivate 
the understandings of our children, exer- 
cise their judgments, enrich their minds 
with useful knowledge, not only in order 
to their personal advantage, but further- 
more to enable them to serve God and 
man. There is no evidence that this was 
not done for the child Jesus, according to 
the rank, the needs, and the resources of 
his modest family. All this is right in 
the sight of God. Happy, then, are the 
parents who, in these several particulars, 
fulfill the difficult duties of education; 
happy, provided that they apply them- 

1 He was called M the carpenter." Mark 6:3. 



The Childhood of Jesus. 27 

selves with still greater zeal to nurture 
their children in the fear of God, and to 
draw down upon them his blessing. 
" These things ought ye to have done, and 
not to leave the other undone." Learning, 
talent, industry, are to be valued highly ; 
but their place is after piety, and at a 
very great distance from piety ; no genius, 
no enlightenment on the part of our 
children, is worthy to be compared with 
a holy life, a just and scrupulous con- 
science, and a heart that delights in 
prayer. 

But when these maxims are embraced, 
is it not to be feared that the education 
which relates to the present life will be 
neglected, and that there will be raised 
up a generation more fitted for heaven 
than for earth, very inadequately pre- 
pared for the service of society, or even 
for the management of a family ? No, 
my brethren, do not think it. Here, as 
every-where, will be verified that profound 



28 The Childhood of Jems. 

saying of our Lord, " Seek ye first the king- 
dom of God, and his righteousness; and 
all these things shall be added unto you." 
For the child, as for the full-grown man, 
" Godliness is profitable unto all things, 
having promise of the life that now is, 
and of that which is to come." It forti- 
fies the will, it fructifies toil, it multiplies 
time, it removes obstacles, it augments 
resources, it emancipates the mind, it 
develops the understanding, it sharpens 
the faculties. A child who fears God 
will be, all other things being equal, more 
inclined than other children to medita- 
tion, to study, to industry, to " whatso- 
ever things are good and praiseworthy 
before God and man ; " the inner history 
of families and of schools would testify 
to this abundantly. However this may 
be, let us give the first place to God, 
because it belongs to him ; let us give it 
to him sincerely, cordially, invariably ; 
and God, "faithful towards those who 



The Childhood of Jesus. 29 



are faithful," will assuredly bring it to 
pass that for this we shall exercise no 
repentance "either in this world or in 
that which is to come." 

Let, then, the love of God be the soul 
of education in our homes, and let his 
Word be its center. Let this Word, read, 
meditated, invoked in our intercourse, 
exert a sovereign authority in our houses, 
and from us let our children learn, better 
than we have learned, to verify that 
promise of the Holy Spirit, " Blessed is 
the man . . . [whose] delight is in the law 
of the Lord; and in his law doth he medi- 
tate day and night." A mother of a fam- 
ily, though married to an irreligious man 
who mocked at religion before his own 
family, nevertheless succeeded in training 
them all up in the fear of the Lord. I 
inquired of her one day privately how 
she had been able to withdraw them from 
the influence of a father whose senti- 
ments were so openly opposed to her own, 



30 The Childhood of Jesus. 



This was her reply: "It is because I did 
not confront the authority of a father 
with that of a mother, but with the au- 
thority bf God. From their tenderest 
years my children have always seen the 
Bible on my table. This holy book was 
the source of all their religious teaching ; I 
kept silence to let it speak. Did they ask 
me a question ? Did they fall into some 
error ? Did they perform a good action ? 
I opened the Bible, and it was that which 
replied to them ; it reproved them, it en- 
couraged them. The constant reading of 
the Scriptures has alone wrought the 
prodigy that astonishes you." 

And we fathers and mothers, are we 
faithful ; do we maintain a consistent 
course? Have we courage enough, faith 
enough, humility enough, to reserve for 
God and his Word, that dominant and 
unshared position accorded them by the 
mother of whom I have just spoken ? 
Would we be satisfied for our children 



The Childhood of Jesus. 31 

with that praise with which the Holy 
Spirit is content in respect to Jesus 
Christ : " And the little child grew and 
waxed strong in spirit, being filled with 
wisdom ; and the grace of God was upon 
him." Do we not suffer ourselves to be 
led away by the spirit of the age ? Do 
we not labor with more zeal to render 
our children well instructed, accomplished, 
distinguished, than to make them good, 
pious, and holy ? Let us fear to see them 
so learned, so accomplished, and so distin- 
guished that they would blush to place 
themselves by the side of the child of 
Nazareth, in the obscure workshop of 
Joseph the carpenter. May God preserve 
our children from " the pollutions of this 
world ! " Above all, may he preserve them 
from being plunged therein by our hands ! 

At the close of the narrative given in 
our text, and as a pendant to the picture 
drawn by Saint Luke, in a single verse, of 
the first years of the childhood of Jesus, 



32 The Childhood of Jesus. 



we find a representation of the latter por- 
tion of his childhood and even of his 
youth, which occupies scarcely more 
space. This follows the scene ' in the 
temple : " And he went down with them, 
and came to Nazareth, and was subject 
unto them : but his mother kept all 
these sayings in her heart. And Jesus 
increased in wisdom and stature, and in 
favour with God and man." These last 
words, which recall to mind the testimony 
borne in the Old Testament to the child- 
hood of Samuel, " The child Samuel 
grew on, and was in favour both with the 
Lord, and also with men," 1 offer a striking 
resemblance to the fortieth verse in which 
the early childhood of Jesus is set before 
us. We are here informed that the moral 
qualities which we admired in this child 
continued to increase with his years, 
as well as the favor which by means of 
them he found with God and with men. 



i 1 Sam. 2 : 26. 



The Childhood of Jesus. 33 



The same spirit which presided over the 
childhood of Jesus still presides over his 
youth ; it is unfolded year by year ; and 
to this fair ideal may be applied in an 
altogether special sense the beautiful 
image in Proverbs : " The path of the 
just is as the shining light, that shineth 
more and more unto the perfect day." 

But in the next to the last verse of our 
text there occurs one word which demands 
our closest attention : " And he was subject 
unto them." 

After the scene which had just passed in 
the temple, and after the vague impression 
of his heavenly calling which Jesus had 
now given to the world, and especially to 
his parents (verses 50, 51), it might 
readily be supposed that the nature of his 
relations to them would be henceforth 
modified by the consciousness of his supe- 
riority. Such would be the judgment of 
human wisdom ; but here again human 
wisdom is at fault. 



34 The Childhood of Jesus. 

Jesus, who had never for a moment 
seemed to turn aside from the tender re- 
spect which he was wont to show to his 
parents except to obey a call from on high, 
returns immediately afterward to his for- 
mer obscurity and obedience, and mani- 
fests a submission yet more complete. 
How wonderful is this characteristic ! 
How remarkably so in this connection ! 
And what discourse, what arguments, 
could so powerfully express the obedience 
which children owe to their fathers ! If 
the only and well-beloved Son of God was 
submissive ; if he in whom was found no 
sin was submissive ; if he who was in the 
beginning with God and was God was 
submissive, — what child, what young 
man, what young woman, can refuse to 
be submissive to father or mother ? Chil- 
dren, young men, young girls, whose de- 
sire it is to be like Jesus, know assuredly 
that next to the duty which you owe 
to God, you have no more sacred obliga- 



The Childhood of Jesus. 



35 



tion in the world, you have no means 
more certain to draw upon you the favor 
of God and of men, than to obey your 
parents. " Children," says the Apostle 
Paul, " obey your parents in the Lord: for 
this is right." 1 Right before God ; right 
before men ; right before your own con- 
science. Also, continues the holy apostle, 
this commandment, " Honour thy father and 
thy mother," is the " first ; " and moreover, 
it is " with promise ; that it may be well 
with thee, and that thou mayest live long 
on the earth ; " 2 as if God had designed to 

iEph. 6: 1. 

2 The meaning is that this is the first commandment, and 
that, furthermore, it is accompanied by a promise. Saint 
Paul styles it the first, because he is referring here only to 
the second table of the law, which comprises the duties 
which we owe to our neighbor ; a like reference he appears 
to make also in Rom. 13 : 9, 10. It is common to explain the 
thought of the apostle in another manner. It is supposed 
that he means to say that the commandment which he has 
just named is the one, among the Ten Commandments, which 
is first of all accompanied by a promise. But this interpre- 
tation presents two difficulties : in the first place, one of the 
preceding commandments, namely, the second, is accompan- 
ied by a promise; and, secondly, not one of the command- 
ments following this has a promise attached. If this be the 
first commandment accompanied by a promise, where is the 
second? 



36 The Childhood of Jesus. 

distinguish this commandment and lift it 
above all the others. 

But I am wandering from my subject. 
To-day I am not addressing myself to chil- 
dren, but to you, fathers and mothers. 
This, then, is the new lesson herein given 
to you : bring up your children in obe- 
dience. Obedience is the soul, the life, 
the salvation of education. Your children 
do not possess sufficient experience to 
understand the full force of that argu- 
ment of the apostle, " For this is right." 
This is the order established by God, and 
the maintenance of this order is the safe- 
guard of all other order, divine or human. 
Undeniably this rule of education per- 
tains to all times and generations ; neither 
the example of the child Jesus nor the 
law of God, as contained alike in the 
Old Testament and in the New, nor the 
moral code among all nations, can possi- 
bly leave any doubt on this point. Did 
time permit I should cite, in confirmation 



The Childhood of Jesus. 37 

of this, numerous maxims derived from 
the Proverbs, a book so original, so in- 
structive, and so salutary in every part 
for the mind that becomes imbued with 
its teachings. But let us go no further 
than to consider how this general rule is 
heightened in importance by the existing 
state of society, and more especially in 
our own country. 

My brethren, all men who reflect are af- 
frighted by the ravages caused in our 
modern world by the spirit of insubordi- 
nation. This spirit, which indeed is found 
in all ages because it is nourished by the 
two passions which are most deeply rooted 
in the natural heart, selfishness and pride, 
has in our day attained to a development 
so little known hitherto that it may with- 
out injustice be styled one of the distinct- 
ive features of our times. Insubordina- 
tion in the State, insubordination in the 
Church, insubordination every-where. We 
ask ourselves to what extent will this 



38 The Childhood of Jesus. 



evil grow, and to what extremes it may 
lead ; and we, more than all others, have 
reason to ask this, we who are now gath- 
ering from it, who have gathered from it, 
and, I will add, may in the future still 
gather from it, such bitter fruits ! This 
evil of such vast magnitude and the more 
difficult to cure because it is one of those 
evils which paralyze in advance the effi- 
cacy of the remedies employed, — upon 
whom can reliance be placed to arrest it 
or resist it ? Upon the State ? The State 
has grave duties to fulfill in this regard ; 
but the State, as the State, being almost 
fatally compelled to put force in place of 
authority, and to rely upon fear instead of 
respect and affection, finds itself evermore 
in the terrible alternative of either leaving 
the spirit of insubordination without check, 
or of incurring the danger of provoking it 
by the very precautions which are adopted 
for its repression. Shall we rely upon the 
Church to arrest this evil? That would 



The Childhood of Jesus. 39 

assuredly be a task worthy of her; but, 
alas ! the Church has been so tossed to and 
fro, and is now so engaged in the work 
of reestablishing order within herself that 
she could not expect that deference or 
that attention from men at this day which 
she would need in order to accomplish so 
great and difficult an enterprise. If there 
is one institution whose aid might be hoped 
for in such an undertaking, it is the fam- 
ily. More than one cause, doubtless, has 
originated the evil which we deplore ; but 
its principal cause, its root, is in the enfee- 
blement of parental authority. Whoever 
has been taught in childhood to honor his 
father and mother will have learnt to 
carry at a later day the same submissive 
spirit into other relations of life, and, ac- 
cording to God's command, to obey princes 
and magistrates, to respect those who rule 
over the church, and to "submit to every 
ordinance of man." 1 But, save by divine 

* 1 Peter 2: 13; Heb. 13: 17. 



40 The Childhood of Jesus. 

grace, how shall one acquire the habit of 
obedience who has not been fashioned to it 
in the family, which is at once the cradle 
and the school of society ? That insubor- 
dination which we deplore in Church and 
State is but the natural result, the inevi- 
table development of the insubordination 
which exists in the family, the full extent 
and the full gravity of which are inade- 
quately apprehended. 

Look around you ; survey all classes of 
society. Go into the cottage of the poor; 
what do you find there but sons who 
think themselves more knowing than 
their father, who raise their voices above 
his voice, who dispute, who grow angry, 
who fly into a rage, and who fail to resist 
authority by physical force only for the 
reason perhaps that their years as yet 
deny them the strength which time will 
quickly bring ? Enter next the house of 
the rich man ; there you will find the 
same disorder, only that it is clothed in 



The Childhood of Jesus. 41 

forms a little less gross. You will find 
there young people, children, who usurp 
the first place in the house, who boldly 
take the lead in conversation, who, as if 
experts in all knowledge, pronounce upon 
the most difficult questions in literature, 
politics, philosophy, or religion. Where 
are the well-ordered households, in which 
are found the empire of authority, the 
silence of submission, and all the saintly 
hierarchy of virtues consecrated by the 
Word of God? 

Christian parents, and you more espe- 
cially who are heads of families, it is with 
you, it is in the family, it is in the. cradle, 
that the social regeneration must com- 
mence, the need of which is felt by you 
all. The authority of parents, an author- 
ity stationed as it were at the very gate 
of society, is at once the mightiest and 
the gentlest that exists in the world. 
Well administered, it hardly knows im- 
possibilities. It need only be used in a 



42 The Childhood of Jesus. 

Christian manner to succeed, with the 
blessing of God, — which will surely be 
given to your pious efforts, — in inspiring 
your children with a spirit of prompt, 
complete, and constant obedience, and, 
if occasion demand it, in enforcing upon 
them such obedience. In that case, but 
only then, you will have been faithful. 
Take heed not to jest with a profane and 
trifling world concerning the weakness of 
fathers in regard to their children; re- 
member that there can be no more serious 
subject. What the world calls spoiling 
children is in the sight of God com- 
mitting a grievous sin against their souls, 
against the good order of society, and 
against the authority of God himself. 
Carefully avoid not only that gross kind 
of indulgence which would lead you to 
yield to their caprices and their cries, but 
also that more subtle complaisance which 
suffers them insensibly to usurp an influ- 
ence in the household which is opposed to 



The Childhood of Jesus, 43 

the interests of all its members and espe- 
cially to their own. Let the child keep 
himself in his place, which is a place of 
respectfulness, of silence, of humility, 
and, above all, of obedience. Alas ! how 
much easier is it to say this than to do it ! 
What father of a family will not peni- 
tently smite upon his breast while com- 
paring his conduct in this respect with 
his duty, in these days when one can not 
conform to the law of God except by 
withdrawing his household and himself, 
first of all, from that wide-spread cor- 
ruption which has alike perverted the 
thoughts and misdirected the acts of men ? 
Heavenly Father, lead us by thy Spirit, 
form us anew after thine image, and teach 
us how to blend, in the education of our 
children, as thou dost in the training of 
thine own, firmness of command with fer- 
vor of love ! 

There remains to be considered the 
principal scene of my text. Jesus had 



44 The Childhood of Jesus. 

now reached the age of twelve years; 
a critical age in which childhood gives 
place to youth, and which the narrative 
in our text appears to commend to our 
attention as an important and decisive 
epoch, when parents may hope, and ought 
to strive, to see their children entering 
upon a personal knowledge and confession 
of the Lord. This was the age at which 
a Jewish child was accustomed to take 
the name of " a son of the covenant," 
and when he began to accompany his 
parents in the pilgrimages which they 
made to Jerusalem three times every 
year, in order to be present upon the 
solemn festivals. Jesus, then, goes up 
to Jerusalem and to the temple for the 
first time (in all probability) since he had 
been presented in the temple when forty 
days old, at the purification of his 
mother. 

That which Jesus chiefly regards in 
his journey to Jerusalem is the opportu- 



The Childhood of Jesus. 45 

nity thus afforded him of hearing those 
doctors who "held the key of knowl- 
edge," and who, " sitting in the seat of 
Moses," instructed the people in the law 
of God. He finds them in the temple, 
and he pauses in the midst of them, listen- 
ing to them, questioning them, and an- 
swering their questions. Observe him 
well. He listens, he questions, he replies, 
but he does not teach. He will teach at 
a later day, when years shall have passed 
and the right time shall have come; he 
will confound these same doctors to whom 
he listens eagerly to-day; but to-day, 
while still a child, he does nothing that 
is at all opposed to the peculiar character 
of childhood. These doctors have been 
set apart to give instruction in the law, 
by the appointment of God and through 
the respect of the people ; and it is in 
conforming himself to this order of 
things, which proceeds both from God 
and from man, that the child Jesus 



46 The Childhood of Jesus. 

awaits the blessing of the Father. He 
looks not at the doctors but to that God 
in whose name the doctors speak ; and in 
this same spirit he will subsequently 
exhort his disciples to observe that which 
the doctors bid them do, but at the same 
time not to imitate their works. 1 

"And all that heard him were aston- 
ished at his understanding 2 and answers." 
By wisdom we make choice of God, of his 
service, and of his Word, as of the one 
thing needful ; by understanding we 
penetrate into the knowledge of God, 
we discern his will, we comprehend 
his Word. Such is the understanding 
that is shown in the questions and the 
answers of the child Jesus, and which 
astonishes all those who hear him. How 
beautiful was it, in truth, and how touch- 
ing to see a child of twelve years reserv- 

1 Matt. 23 : 3. 

2 This is the exact translation of the word which our ver- 
sions have rendered by wisdom. (Our English Version 
gives the exact rendering as above, " understanding." — Tr.) 



The Childhood of Jesus. 47 

ing the lovely ardor of his youth for the 
service of God ; eager to be taught his 
Word, and having already made such 
progress therein that he instructs and 
edifies those whom he came to question 
with a child's simplicity ; thus verifying 
in all its fullness that declaration of 
Psalm 119 (vs. 99, 100) : « I have more 
understanding than all my teachers ; I 
understand more than the ancients." 

But the true spirit of the child Jesus, 
and the chief lesson which this history 
gives us with regard to Christian educa- 
tion, is disclosed in the reply which Jesus 
makes to his mother when she tells him 
of the trouble which he had caused both 
her and his father : " How is it that ye 
sought me ? Did ye not know that I 
must be about my Father's business ? " 
Deducting that special portion of this 
answer which was adapted only to the 
divine child, elevated by his nature and 
his work above terrestrial relationships 



48 The Childhood of Jesus, 

and affections, we find here the expression 
of a thought suited to all children and 
which ought to preside over all education ; 
and that is the thought that God and the 
work he has given us to do must have 
precedence over all besides. In this lan- 
guage we recognize him who was to say, 
at a later day, when driving the money- 
changers out of the temple, " The zeal of 
thine house hath eaten me up ; " and, on 
another occasion, forgetting the care of 
his body in order to proclaim the king- 
dom of God, " My meat is to do the will 
of him that sent me, and to finish his 
work;'' and, while praying for the last 
time with his disciples, " I have finished 
the work which thou gavest me to do." 

Christian parents, it is here that we pene- 
trate into the heart of our subject. Let 
us not turn away our eyes from the sol- 
emn lesson which God gives us through 
this child, even should we, like his mother, 
find in it u a sword which shall pierce our 



The Childhood of Jesus. 49 

own souls." Do you wish that your chil- 
dren should be such as the child Jesus 
showed himself to be on that momentous 
occasion? Do you wish that they, like 
you and better than you, should partici- 
pate in the feasts and ordinances of the 
Lord ? Secure for them the formation of 
religious habits, in the church and espe- 
cially in the family. But that is not the 
chief point at which you should aim. 
Do you wish them to be capable, by their 
rapid advancement in wisdom and in spirit- 
ual knowledge, to astonish those who hear 
them, and at twelve years of age to sur- 
pass the ancient doctors ? What then ? 
Place in their hands the Word of God, 
since to it alone does it pertain to effect 
this amazing prodigy. But neither is that 
the chief point to be aimed at. Behold it 
here ! You wish — do you wish ? — that 
they should be so firmly resolved to fulfill 
the work which their heavenly Father has 
given them to do, that, if the day comes 



50 The Childhood of Jesus. 

when they can do it only on condition of 
becoming separated from yon and inflict- 
ing on you severe distress, they shall not 
hesitate on account of the separation and 
the distress. Strengthen them, therefore, 
against themselves and against you, by 
your discourse and by your example. 
Nurture them in the thought that in their 
esteem God must be above all others, even 
above you ; and show your children that 
in your esteem God is put above all others, 
even above them. 

Your children, before they belong to 
you, belong to God. Because they are 
not his in that special and supernatural 
sense which is peculiar to the Son of 
Mary, they do not the less truly belong 
to him, who has entrusted them to you 
expressly that they may be trained up for 
his service, saying to you, as formerly the 
daughter of Pharaoh said to the mother of 
Moses: " Take this child away, and nurse 
it for me." Not to respond to such an 



The Childhood of Jesus. 51 

appeal would be an act of unfaithfulness, 
and the greatest of all such acts on ac- 
count of the infinite value of the deposit. 
What would the mismanagement of a 
fortune be in comparison with the mis- 
management of an immortal and account- 
able soul ? But for this accountable and 
immortal soul, just as truly as for Jesus 
Christ when a child, God has in view not 
only the general obligation to glorify him, 
but also a special work in which that soul 
is bound to glorify him, and in reference 
to which all has been provided and regu- 
lated beforehand — all resources, apti- 
tudes, and circumstances. In that direc- 
tion all paths are opened for your child, 
who will see his way made ready before 
him, day by day, by the hand of God, as 
it was in the life of Jesus ; but he will 
not be able to labor in any other direction 
without failing to fulfill his vocation and 
disturbing the entire order of his exist- 
ence, just as Jesus would have done 



52 The Childhood of Jesus. 

when be became a man if — to state an 
impossible hypothesis — he had devoted 
his human life and his celestial gifts to 
some other object than the redemption of 
mankind. 

To be a father or a mother is to be a 
" co-worker with God " in the care of 
souls, with the combined resources of a 
tenderness, an influence, and an authority 
equaled by nothing else on earth. Fathers 
and mothers, be faithful. Understand 
your task better than Joseph and Mary 
apprehended theirs at that solemn festi- 
val; and when understood, fulfill it by 
setting before your children an example of 
self-renunciation and of seeking God alone. 
God wills, and Abraham lifts his obedient 
hand against his only and well-beloved 
son ; God wills, and Isaac, without resist- 
ance and without a murmur, bids farewell 
to his father and to life. Be that Abra- 
ham ; train your child to become like 
Isaac. Apply your mind, with the child, 



The Childhood of Jesus, 53 

to discern the work to which God calls 
him ; examine his gifts, interrogate events 
and the leadings of a paternal providence ; 
seek and you shall find, if so be that you 
put far from you every thing, your own 
will, worldly honor, fortune and interest, 
in order to take heed to one point alone, 
the will of God and the calling of God. 

I do but lay down the principle ; I leave 
with you the applications of that princi- 
ple. The work of God which is reserved 
for your children may be of infinitely 
diversified kinds. And yet there is one 
work which I wish to name, because it has 
a special connection with that of Jesus ; I 
mean that work which has for its object 
the evangelization of the world, and which 
Jesus himself commends especially to our 
attention and to our prayers : " The har- 
vest truly is great, but the labourers are 
few ; pray ye therefore the Lord of the 
harvest, that he would send forth labourers 
into his harvest." What is the great evil 



54 The Childhood of Jesus. 

of which complaint is now made in all 
directions ? It is the want of laborers. 
Resources are feeble, it is true; but the 
failure is not so much there as with 
regard to laborers ; and whenever well- 
qualified laborers have been found for 
any work of evangelization, I have 
never perceived that money was want- 
ing; we might as well say that it was 
wanting to the Lord of heaven and 
earth. But good laborers are needed 
every-where ; it is the common cry. The 
heathen world, thrown open before us, 
calls loudly for missionaries, but they are 
sought for in vain; they are not found. 
Out of more than a million of French 
Protestants, hardly two or three in the 
course of a year present themselves in 
response to our reiterated appeals ; and of 
these two or three hardly one remains, 
after careful trial, who can be sent forth 
with confidence. Pastors, good pastors 
for our churches, are not less difficult to 



The Childhood of Jesus. 55 

discover ; a recent enumeration showed a 
large number of posts still unoccupied. 
Nearer your homes, in Paris, perhaps in 
your own quarter of the city, fifty fami- 
lies ask to be visited ; schools are ready to 
be opened ; funds are at hand, or will be 
when needed; but the evangelists, the 
instructors, male and female, are not to be 
found. Those for whom the work of 
evangelization would be a career of self- 
denial, the children of rich families or of 
those in easy circumstances, do not enter 
upon it; the few who undertake such 
labor nearly all belong to the lower classes 
of society, from which our ranks are 
too exclusively recruited. Thus faithful 
pastors, well-furnished preachers, skillful 
directors, zealous evangelists, active col- 
porters, capable teachers, are rare treas- 
ures, easier to be enumerated than to be 
increased. 

And your sons and your daughters, 
what are they doing? for whom are you 



56 The Childhood of Jesus. 



training them up? Is not the work of the 
Lord Jesus worthy of them? Will you 
not at least examine and see if their right- 
ful place be not among those laborers 
whom you are asking the Lord of the har- 
vest to send forth, whilst he is asking you 
for them perhaps, and you are refusing 
them to him ? Where are those faithful 
Monicas 1 who have but one favor to ask 
for their sons, that they may be permitted 
to serve the Lord, even though they 
should be forever far separated from their 
tender mothers ? An easier task, perhaps, 
than to find the Monicas, it would be to 
name such and such a father who, when 
urged by his son to suffer him to be en- 
rolled in the soldiery of Jesus Christ, has 
obstinately resisted, and has preferred, at 
the prompting of a selfish and carnal 
affection, to devote his son to a career to 

1 Monica, mother of the illustrious church teacher, Augus- 
tine. Her soul yearned for her son's conversion and for his 
consecration to God, in the midst of the impieties of his 
early youth. — Tr. 



The Childhood of Jesus. 57 

which God has not called him, and to 
deliver him up, it may be, to all the vani- 
ties and lusts of the world. Oh, that 
fathers and mothers were faithful ! That 
fashion were not queen of the world, and 
money were not its king ! Oh, that chil- 
dren were received as from the hand of 
God, to be consecrated to God ! What a 
blessing would then result to families, and 
what a blessing to the Church ! How 
many exemplary pastors, how many pow- 
erful preachers, how many skillful teach- 
ers, how many active evangelists, would 
then be found to meet every demand and 
every need ! Without leaving this church 
how many might be found in this audi- 
ence, and how much good could be done 
to the world by the children here assem- 
bled ! Fathers and mothers, be faithful ! 
Far from sorrowing that your sons or your 
daughters should be " about their Father's 
business," press them into it yourselves. 
Train them up for God, give them back 



58 The Childhood of Jesus. 

to God, and leave them with God to work 
his will. Such is the secret of Christian 
education. 

Does this education seem to you a 
very solemn thing ? But have you lost 
sight of the truth that all that is Chris- 
tian is of Christ, and that all that is of 
Christ partakes of the cross ? The child 
who has just now been teaching us for 
our children will teach us also for our- 
selves. We read in our Gospels that Jesus 
took a little child one day and placed him 
in the midst of his disciples and said unto 
them : " Become like this little child." 
Something like this I am doing to-day. 
In thought I place a child in the midst of 
you, saying to you, " Become like this 
child ; " and this child is Jesus himself. 
He grows up in the shade ; he becomes 
strong by degrees ; he increases in favor 
with God and with men ; he interests and 
touches even the doctors of the law. But 
look up toward the horizon ; for whom is 



The Ohildhood of Jesus. 59 

that cross rising ? For the holy child, 
who shall save the world; for him first, 
and then for all those who desire to follow 
him, in proportion to the good which they 
will to do and the resources for its accom- 
plishment which God has entrusted to 
them. 

Be of good courage then, ye fathers 
and mothers ! Go forward, in faith ! 
There is no Son of God without his cross ; 
no Isaac without his altar ; no Mary with- 
out the sword that pierces her soul ; no 
spiritual birth without rending and 
anguish ; but to-morrow the Son of God 
will have risen, Isaac will be unbound, 
Mary comforted, and all your sacrifices 
will be forgotten in the supreme joy of 
being enabled to say to your God and the 
God of your children, u Here am I and 
the children whom God hath given me ! " 
Amen. 



THE CHILD AT THE PASSOVER 



THE CHILD AT THE PASSOVER. 



Y dear children, at your age one 
loves to travel ; what say you, 
then, to a long and beautiful 
journey? You are in Paris, in the year 
1851 ; betake yourselves in thought to 
Judaea, at the period of which Saint 
Luke is speaking, precisely eighteen 
hundred and fifty years ago. As to the 
time of year, there is nothing to be 
changed ; we are at the end of the month 
of March, which corresponds to the mid- 
dle of the Jewish month of Nisan ; and 
this is just as we would have it. Only, 
Judaea being eighteen degrees, that is to 
say 1,250 miles, nearer than we to the 




64 The Child at the Passover. 

equator (your teachers will explain that 
to you), the season is there more ad- 
vanced than with us. It is the most 
beautiful part of the year in one of the 
finest countries of the earth; to-day the 
Turks have changed it so greatly that it 
can not be recognized as the same ; but I 
am speaking of Judaea as it was formerly. 
We are now in that pleasant temperature 
of spring, when it is no longer cold and 
it is not yet warm. At the utmost, the 
heat is a little uncomfortable in the plains 
of Jericho and on the shores of that 
frightful Dead Sea, near which every 
thing is dead. Elsewhere it is agreeably 
tempered : in the interior, by the eleva- 
tion of the land, the whole country being 
like a long, low mountain range ; and 
along the coast there is a refreshing 
breeze which blows from the sea morning 
and evening, and which is called by 
Moses "the wind of the day." 1 The 

1 Gen. 3 : 8. (See margin of English Version. — Tr.) 



The Child at the Passover. 65 



rains, storms, 1 and inundations have 
ceased. The river Jordan, after having 
during several weeks overflowed its 
banks and deposited a fertilizing slime, 2 
has just fallen back quietly into its con- 
fined and narrow bed, to the great delight 
of the husbandman, who was beginning 
to fear lest his lands might be soaked so 
thoroughly as to be carried away, and 
who was eager, also, to be freed from the 
foray of the lion, driven from his lair by 
the swelling of Jordan. 3 It is already 
several weeks since the trees began to 
put forth their leaves, and the almond 
tree its flowers, compared by Solomon to 
the white hairs of an aged man. 4 The 
apricot, the peach, and the plum are 
almost ripe, and the first ears of corn are 
falling beneath the scythe of the reaper, 
whom the passers-by salute in these 
words, " The Lord be with thee ! " and 

1 These, in Judaea, occur ordinarily only in the winter. 
(1 Sam. 12 : 16-18.) 

2 Josh. 3 : 15. 

3 Jer. 49; 19; 50; 44. 

4 Eccles. 12; 5. 



66 



The Child at the Passover. 



who replies thus to their salutation : 
44 The Lord bless you ! " 1 

God has so well arranged events, my 
dear children, that the happiest time of 
year for the soil agrees exactly with the 
time in which God delivered his people 
44 out of the land of Egypt and out of 
the house of bondage." We are at the 
beginning of the harvest : we are also at 
the feast of the passover, the most impor- 
tant of the three great festivals. Do you 
see here and there, scattered over the 
country, those clouds of travelers coming 
from all parts of Judaea, who are going up 
to Jerusalem, 2 44 as doves flying to their 
windows"? 3 They are the families of 
Israel, gathered in great companies, or 
caravans, who are going to present them- 
selves 4 * before the Lord their God, in the 
place which he hath chosen." 4 The men 

1 Ruth 2: 4; Ps. 129: 8. 

2 They were accustomed to say go up to Jerusalem, be- 
cause that city is built upon an elevated plateau. 

3 Is. 60: 8. 

4 Deut. 1G : 16. 



The Child at the Passover. 67 

will appear there on two other occasions 
in the year, in May for the feast of Pen- 
tecost, and in September for the feast of 
Tabernacles; but the women, who are 
not under the same obligation to make 
this pilgrimage, and who can seldom un- 
dertake it more than once each year, 
usually reserve themselves for the pass- 
over feast. In the day-time the caravan 
makes its way through a delicious coun- 
try, which is like one continued garden, 1 
with the exception of a small number of 
dry places which the faith of the pilgrims 
leads them to pass over without murmur- 
ings ; 2 and at night it halts at vast inns, 
or it disperses and seeks rest, if time per- 
mits, under tents hastily pitched in the 
open air. While traveling on, they sing 
in chorus some of those songs of Maha- 
loth? that is to say, songs of the ascents 
(or goings-up), because they were in- 

i Gen. 13 : 10. 
2Ps.84: 6. 

» Pso 120-iat. 



68 The Child at the Passover. 

tended to be repeated by the pilgrims as 
they went up to Jerusalem; for example, 
Psalm 125, commencing thus, " They that 
trust in the Lord shall be as mount 
Zion, which cannot be removed, but 
abideth for ever. As the mountains are 
round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is 
round about his people from henceforth 
even for ever ; " or Psalm 126, ending 
thus, " They that sow in tears shall 
reap in joyous singing. He that goeth 
forth and weepeth, bearing precious 
seed, shall doubtless come again with 
rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." 
But whilst you are traveling and whilst 
you are singing, my dear children, who 
shall protect your houses and your fields 
against enemies or against robbers? Be 
at ease ; God has provided for this, for he 
forgets nothing which concerns us. He 
has said by the mouth of Moses, " No man 
shall desire thy land, when thou shalt go 
up to appear before the Lord thy God 



The Child at the Passover. 



69 



thrice in the year." 1 Go then and cele- 
brate your feast without anxiety; God 
defends your property, and that which 
God defends is well defended. 2 But 
what are those pilgrims going to do when 
once they have arrived at Jerusalem ? I 
shall give you an abridged account of 
this, my children, for to relate the whole 
in detail would take too long. 3 Every 
family begins by providing itself with a 
lodging at Jerusalem for the days of the 
festival; and this is not easily secured; 
for the population of the city, which is 
about 120,000 souls in ordinary times, 

iEx.34: 24. 

2 Perhaps there is an allusion to this touching promise in 
Ps. 125 : 3 : " For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon 
the lot of the righteous." 

3 The celebration of the Jewish passover is described in 
detail in several numbers of the Semeur, 1836, under the 
title, The Journey of Helon to Jerusalem. 

It is to be desired that this series, as entertaining as it is 
instructive, should be published in a separate volume. 
(" Helon 's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," translated from the 
German of Frederick Strauss, and abridged and edited by- 
Rev. Baron Stow, of Boston, was published, Boston, Mass., 
in 1835, and forms one of the most interesting and valuable 
books in the department of treatises on Jewish antiquities. 
— Tr.) 



70 The Qhild at the Passover, 

becomes twenty-fold greater during the 
feast of the passover. 1 The feast contin- 
ues seven days, of which the first and the 
last are the great days of the feast ; and 
these are " days of holy convocation," 2 or 
of public worship and of " Sabbath " rest 
(or complete repose) ; the intermediate 
days are divided between ordinary labor 
and the ceremonies of the festival. On 
the first day, as soon as the opening of 
the feast has been announced by sound 
of trumpet from the temple mount, the 
father of every family brings to the tem- 
ple a lamb or a kid a year old and with- 
out blemish ; he slays it in the court of 
the priests ; 3 and after the priests have 
sprinkled the blood of the victim upon 
the altar of burnt offerings, he takes it 
to his dwelling and roasts it with fire. 

1 According to Josephus; Winer, Eeahvoerterbuch. 

2 Lev. 23 : 7, 8. 

3 Ordinarily, it was the priest who slew the victim; but on 
the day of the passover this function was performed by all 
the Israelites, to show that they formed a kingdom of 
priests. 



The Child at the Passover. 71 



When the evening has come, this lamb 
is placed, together with the unleavened 
bread and bitter herbs, upon a table 
around which all the members of the 
family assemble, standing, their shoes on 
their feet, their loins girt, their staves in 
their hands, like men ready to set out 
on a journey. The father of the family 
blesses the food placed upon the table, 
particularly the lamb of the passover, 
which he divides among all who are 
present ; it is necessary that the lamb 
be eaten wholly, or, if some part of it 
should remain till the next morning, 
that part must be consumed by fire. 
At the beginning and at the end of 
the repast he blesses a cup of wine and 
passes it around several times, whilst the 
family are singing the great Hallel, that is 
to say, the great thanksgiving ; such is the 
name given to Psalm 113 and those imme- 
diately following, including Psalm 118. 
Doubtless they must have sung with 



72 The Qhild at the Passover. 

peculiar feeling those words of Psalm 
118 : " This is the day which the Lord 
hath made ; we will rejoice and be glad 
in it." I ought not to forget to tell you 
that the youngest child of the family asks 
at the beginning of the meal, " What 
mean ye by this service ? " Then the 
father of the family answers him by 
relating — just as he had formerly heard 
his own father relate — the history of that 
memorable night in which Israel went out 
of the land of Egypt and in which the 
feast of the passover was celebrated for 
the first time. These bitter herbs recall 
the days of bitterness passed in Egypt; 
these loaves of unleavened *bread and this 
repast eaten while standing remind them 
of the hurried flight which did not suffer 
their fathers to wait for the dough to rise 
or to take their seats at the table ; and 
this slain lamb is in remembrance of the 
lamb whose blood had been sprinkled upon 
u the two side-posts and the upper door- 



The Child at the Passover. 73 

post of the houses," to turn aside from 
them the destroying angel. 1 Next to the 
emotions peculiar to that first day, nothing 
is more touching than when, on the even- 
ing of the second day just after the sun 
had set, they go out into a field near Jeru- 
salem and gather a handful of wheat to 
offer it in the temple, thus sanctifying the 
use of the fruits of the earth. 2 The other 
days of the feast are specially celebrated 
by numerous sacrifices. You say, perhaps, 
my dear children, that is not the part 
which would have pleased you best ; how 
could one see with satisfaction gentle 
lambs and timid kids slain ? But that 
was necessary, as you know, to direct the 
thoughts of men forward to that tender 
and innocent Victim who was to die for 
the sins of the world. Ah ! those grand 
recollections, those solemn instructions, 
those family repasts, those psalms that 

1 Ex. 12 : 7-14. 

2 Lev. 23 : 10-14. 



74 The Child at the Passover. 

were sung, that magnificent temple with 
its vast courts and splendid colonnades, — 
how interesting must it all have been ! 
You might well wish to be there — and I 
also ! 

But do you know what I should have 
especially desired, my young friends ? I 
should have desired to be one in that cara- 
van which you see in the distance going 
up to the feast from Nazareth to Jerusa- 
lem. And why ? Is it because that cara- 
van is richer or more honored than the 
others ? On the contrary, it is less so ; 
Nazareth was held in low esteem at that 
day, and the Jews said, a Nazarene ! just 
as people among us thoughtlessly use epi- 
thets of contempt. Well then, children, 
what is it that attracts me to the caravan 
from Nazareth ? Ah ! it is because there 
is in it a child of twelve whom I would 
have ardently desired to know ! And I 
am not alone in this feeling; for "many 
prophets and many kings have desired to 



The Qhild at the Passover. 75 

see him, and have not seen him, and to 
hear him, and have not heard him." 1 I 
can well believe this. The angels them- 
selves stoop down from the heavenly 
heights to contemplate him and to follow 
all his footsteps, inquiring one of another, 
"What manner of child shall this be ? " In 
whom a series of prophecies dating from 
the creation of the world lead them to 
foresee at once the " Lamb of God," who 
is to " take away our sins " by his bitter 
sacrifice, and the glorious Conqueror who 
shall " destroy the works of the devil," 
and the mighty King who shall gather the 
" nations for his inheritance and the utter- 
most parts of the earth for his possession." 
A child twelve years of age, who is grow- 
ing up to be the " Saviour of the world." 
What a spectacle, my dear children ! And 
when, having reached the age of twelve 
years, at which time the young Hebrew 
received the name of " son of the cove- 

1 Matt. 13 : 17. 



76 The Child at the Passover. 



nant" and began to participate in the sol- 
emn feasts, he now goes up to Jerusalem 
for the first time, what an honor and what 
a privilege for the caravan that possesses 
this peerless child ! That is true : but 
perhaps those who enjoyed this honor and 
privilege were not aware of it : nay, even 
Mary, his mother, and Joseph, whom, out 
of respect, he called his father, although 
he was the Son of God, were but imper- 
fectly conscious of his true character. 
And the reason of this is found in the 
fact that the child Jesus was distinguished 
from other children only by his holy and 
sweet obedience ; he did not teach and he 
did no miracles : he did not heal the sick ; 
the time for all that had not yet come. 
Hence the Gospels which speak to us at 
such length of the last three years of the 
life of Jesus tell us almost nothing either 
of his childhood or of all the time preced- 
ing his baptism. In Saint Luke, for ex- 
ample, there are twenty-three chapters 



The Child at the Passover. 77 

relating to three years, and but one chap- 
ter devoted to thirty years ! You would 
like to know more concerning those thirty 
years, would you not? But God has 
caused his Word to be written for our edi- 
fication, n t for our amusement ; and if it 
speaks so a tie of the child Jesus, it is 
doubtless io teach us that a child ought 
not to cause himself to be spoken of, hid- 
den as he is in the family or in the school, 
and waiting until God shall make a man 
of him and for the time when he should 
appear before the eyes of the world. But 
though Saint Luke says so little of the 
child Jesus, he does tell us some things 
about him, especially in connection with 
the passover feast ; and what he says is 
full of instruction, as is all which is 
written in the Bible. The child Jesus, so 
humble and so modest, is, nevertheless, 
extraordinary in one thing — in one only : 
he is holy. He passed through all ages, 
from that of the child who is just born to 



78 The Child at the Passover. 

that of the full-grown man, in order to 
sanctify them all ; and as the man Jesus is 
the model for men, so the child Jesus is 
the model for children. For this reason it 
is that I speak to you of him to-day. The 
greater number of you are nearly twelve 
years old, which was the age of Jesus at 
the time of the feast. Learn, then, from 
the child Jesus what a child of your age 
ought to be. Oh, my children, how good, 
happy, and lovely you would be, did you 
resemble him ! And why should you not 
resemble him? The first thing to do in 
order to be like him is to know him well, 
and this we will try to do, by the help of 
God. 

The child Jesus is a strict observer of 
the law of Moses and of the worship 
which it prescribed. After his birth and 
before the child had " knowledge to cry, 
My father, and my mother," 1 he had 
been carried to the temple, and all that 

1 Is. 8 : 4. 



The Child at the Passover. 79 

was commanded in the law of the Lord 
had been fulfilled with respect to him. 
But thus far it was less himself who had 
done it than his mother and his father who 
had done it for him ; as it was in your 
case, dear children, when you were bap- 
tized. But now he has reached the age 
of discretion. And just as soon as the 
number of his years permits him to take 
part in the festivals at Jerusalem, he 
makes haste to profit by them ; for it is 
easy to see that it is not obedience merely, 
but also the desire of his own heart, which 
leads him to Jerusalem with his parents. 
You will say, perhaps, Could not a child so 
filled with the grace of God, and so well 
instructed in his Word, have dispensed with 
doing that which is done by others, and 
with listening to that to which they are 
accustomed to listen ? No, my children ; 
Jesus is far from reasoning in that man- 
ner, either at twelve years of age or even 
at thirty. You remember that when at 



80 The Child at the Passover, 

thirty years of age John the Baptist re- 
fused to baptize him, saying to him, "I 
have need to be baptized by thee, and 
comest thou to me?" 1 Jesus answered 
him, " Suffer it to be so now : for thus it be- 
cometh us to fulfil all righteousness." You 
remember, also, how scrupulously Jesus, 
even after having been declared to be the 
Son of God, 2 repairs to the synagogues 
every Sabbath and to the temple at every 
feast. It is thus that from his early child- 
hood Jesus shows himself in all things 
" an Israelite indeed," humbly submitting 
himself to the law of Moses, 3 although he 
is the Son of God, and Moses is only the 
servant ; 4 but for Jesus the word of 
Moses is the word of God, and to disobey 
Moses would have been to disobey God. 
Hence the holy eagerness with which 
he presents himself, at twelve years of 
age, at the passover feast; an eagerness 



1 Matt. 3 : 14. 

2 Matt. 3 : 17. 



3 Gal. 4 : 4. 
* Heb. 5 : 6. 



The Child at the Passover. 81 

increased, you may rest assured, by the 
thought of going thither with his family: 
with his mother, his father, his brothers 
and sisters. 1 Because he loves them all 
tenderly, he takes delight at all times in 
their society ; but he takes double delight 
in seeing himself encircled by them when 
he goes to render to God the worship 
which is due unto him. God becomes to 
him more adorable when he thus adores 
him in unison with his mother and all his 
relatives ; and his mother and his friends 
become more dear to him while adoring 
God with him ! Delightful simplicity of 
a docile, loving, and pious child ! 

My children, follow the , example of 
Jesus. Christian worship has not in the 
New Testament, like the Jewish worship 
in the Old Testament, precise and minute 
laws designed to regulate the order, the 
time, the place, and every particular of its 
observance. It is a great pity that this is 

1 Matt. 13 : 55, 56. 



82 The Child at the Passover. 

so, many people will say : we could act 
with more certainty and confidence if 
God had continued to decide all things for 
us. Say, rather, with more indolence of 
conscience ; that for which you ask would 
not agree with the spirit of the gospel. 
Under the old covenant God treated his 
people like a people in their childhood, 
who must be led along as it were by lead- 
ing strings ; under the new dispensation 
he treats his people like men fully grown, 
who must be suffered to walk by them- 
selves, the right path being pointed out to 
them. Shall the grown man regret the 
time when he walked in leading strings 
and sigh for its return, pretending that it 
was more comfortable ? He will cherish 
no such regrets if he has any spirit or un- 
derstanding. No more will the Christian 
regret his not having, like the Jew, a com- 
plete code of his religious duties, if he has 
understood the privilege and glory of a 
soul directly " taught of the Lord," 1 that 



i Is. 54 : 13. 



The Child at the Passover. 83 

is to say, inwardly guided by the Holy 
Spirit ; as reasonable would it be to become 
a Jew again, and to return to the ablu- 
tions, fasts, and sacrifices of the old econ- 
omy. But in place of written rules we 
have the usages established every-where 
by the Christian Church and more espe- 
cially by the Protestant Church — usages 
founded upon the Word of God alone. 
We have yearly festivals, with their com- 
munion services, and, above all, we have 
the weekly festival, Sunday, with its wor- 
ship, its assemblies, and its schools. When 
a solemn feast returns, such, for instance, 
as Easter, now near at hand, let your 
minds, my dear children, be filled with 
that which you are to do, as was the mind 
of the child Jesus when going up to Jeru- 
salem. A long and fatiguing journey is 
not required of you, as it was of him. 
" God is a Spirit," and every one, wher- 
ever he is, can adore him there. But seek 
so much the more earnestly to enter into 



84 Th&fVhild at the Passover. 

the spirit of the feast. For what purpose 
is this Easter feast, which is celebrated 
among all Christian nations? And what 
is the event which it recalls ? Why is that 
table spread in the church? Why do 
those believers receive the bread and the 
wine, and those young people eat and 
drink with them for the first time ? And 
what must I do in order to join them in 
my turn ? Especially, my children, in this 
spirit consider Sunday, that festival of 
festivals, at once the greatest of all and 
the most common of all. Love that beau- 
tiful day which invites all the earth to 
rejoice together : the artisan to take his 
rest, the poor and afflicted to be of good 
cheer, and families to meet together in the 
name of the Lord. Open your eyes and 
your ears, and behold what grace God has 
bestowed on you in preparing for you 
on that day Sunday-schools to which 
you have only to repair, and Christian 
sermons which you have only to go and 



The Child at the Passover. 85 



hear and receive into your hearts. But, 
my friends, do you thoroughly appreciate 
this gift of a Sabbath? Do you know 
what a blessing from God will come upon 
you, if from your childhood you form the 
holy habit, for your entire life, of sanctify- 
ing the Sabbath with your families, of 
sanctifying it in the church, and of sancti- 
fying it also in your houses? Let but 
one salutary impression be received and 
obeyed each Sunday, one good book pe- 
rused, or one fervent prayer offered to 
God, — how much profit might this bring 
to you, and against how many snares 
might it protect you ! Yes, my friends, 
when the devil seeks to destroy a poor 
child, when he wishes to make him wicked 
and worthless, a thief or a rioter, he be- 
gins by attacking his Sabbath: 66 Ah! my 
poor friend, is that your rest ? You are 
very good to take so much trouble. 
Could you not find some better amuse- 
ment than listening to a sermon ? And 



86 The Child at the Passover. 

that Sunday-school, into the bargain ! 
Your first communion — and how many 
people there are who have never com- 
muned at all ! " It is thus that the devil 
speaks; and God speaks to you these 
words : " Forsake not the assembling of 
yourselves together, as the manner of 
some is." 1 Hear God, my friends, and 
God alone ; you shall be profited thereby, 
even in this life. " Seek first the kingdom 
of God and his righteousness ; and all 
these things shall be added thereunto." 
It is impossible for you to think of all that 
may be gained by the right use of the 
Sabbath, even as regards the happiness of 
this life, the harmony of families, the de- 
velopment of the mind, and the acquisi- 
tion of all that is good. Two years ago 
I was present in the city of Glasgow, 
Scotland, at a great religious assembly. 
The lord provost of the city, or, as we 
should say, the mayor, a pious man, 

i Heb. 10: 25. 



The Child at the Passover. 87 



who presided over the meeting, began by 
informing the public that instead of 
hearing ministers, they were to listen 
that evening to some working-men. And 
several young workmen of from twenty 
to thirty years of age spoke, and their 
speaking was quite equal, if not superior, 
to that of many pastors and of many rep- 
resentatives of the people. I had never 
heard any thing like it. I inquired how 
they had learned to speak so well, and 
this is the answer that was made : " They 
owe it to the Sabbath. They meet to- 
gether every Sunday to converse with one 
another concerning the Bible and what- 
ever may serve to promote God's kingdom 
in the world. And thus they become 
both good Christians and good orators." 

It was not his body only which Jesus 
carried to the feast, but also his mind ; it 
was not his hands only which he lifted up 
to God his Father, but also his heart ; this 
you would have readily understood, chil- 



88 The Child at the Passover. 

dren, even if Saint Luke had said nothing 
on the subject. But you would not have 
expected to see him remaining alone 
behind the caravan, so that after three 
days had passed his parents find him sit- 
ting in the temple in the midst of the 
doctors, "who were astonished at" his wis- 
dom and his answers." Apparently the 
two preceding days had been spent in a 
similar manner : what eager desire to be 
instructed in divine things ! It would 
have seemed even excessive in an ordinary 
child. Certainly if Jesus had not had a 
special mission as the Son of God, he 
would not have caused three days of 
anxiety to his parents, and particularly to 
his tender mother, by remaining in Jeru- 
salem without their knowledge. But I 
put aside that which pertains to his excep- 
tional nature and mission, and occupy 
myself only with that which can and 
ought to be imitated by all children. 
Again I say, my dear children, what an 



The Child at the Passover, 89 



eager desire did he show to be instructed 
in divine things ! There are so many 
children who shun the school, and who 
are frightened at the very sight of a 
teacher; he, on the contrary, makes a 
school expressly for himself, and detains 
the teachers in order to question them in 
private, after having heard them in public. 

For observe this well, it is to instruct 
himself and not to instruct others that 
Jesus remains in the temple. Jesus at 
twelve years of age does not teach : he lis- 
tens, he puts questions, he modestly answers 
those that are addressed to him, accord- 
ing to the custom of Jewish doctors with 
their disciples. You would perhaps have 
thought that Jesus would have begun to 
preach, to harangue, to rebuke, with the 
authority of his divine nature and his 
superior intelligence. He could have done 
this with ease, assuredly ; for who could 
more justly say : " I have more under- 
standing than all my teachers, because I 



90 The Child at the Passover. 

keep thy precepts " ? 1 But such is not his 
will ; he prefers to say with young Elihu : 
" Days should speak and multitude of 
years should teach wisdom." 2 His time 
will come " to teach with authority and 
not as the scribes ; " 3 but to-day he does 
not teach, he learns ; he is not a doctor, 
he is a child. A child who sets up for a 
teacher is a sad spectacle, my friends, and 
one that Jesus never thought of exhibit- 
ing. He is far too humble, too modest for 
that, too truly one of his own age. It is 
sometimes thought to be a great eulogy 
on a child to say of him that he is far in 
advance of his age. In advance of his 
age ? So much the better, if that means 
that he is more pious, more thoughtful, 
more docile, more studious than most chil- 
dren are at his age. But if it means that 
he possesses manners, a tone, an assurance, 
an air of authority, which are not natural 

1 Ps. 119: 99, 100. 

2 Job 32: 7. 

3 Matt. 7 : 29. 



The Child at the Passover. 91 

to his age, so much the worse truly ; far 
better would I like to see him of his 
age, as was Jesus. A child ought to be 
of his own age, and conformed to it ; for 
his age is God's time for him. Do not 
speak to me of those children who are lit- 
tle men ; for them to be so is of no advan- 
tage to either body or mind, and to the 
soul least of all. 

But you may ask, Had those doctors 
any thing to teach Jesus, when they them- 
selves so imperfectly apprehended the law 
of God that, twenty years later, they 
would join the Pharisees in crying out for 
the death of him whose " wisdom and 
answers " they are to-day admiring ? It 
is true, children, that they were to act 
thus ; and yet Jesus listens to them, and 
learns by listening to them. It is true, as 
he said subsequently, the doctors "say 
and do not." 1 The greater part of them 
were not to be imitated, although there 

i Matt. 23 : 3. 



92 The Qhild at the Passover. 

might be some good men among them ; 1 
but they had, nevertheless, many good 
things to say, having in their hands the 
books of Moses, and being accustomed to 
meditate on them from generation to gen- 
eration. You perceive, for example, that 
when Herod asks these teachers where 
Christ should be born, there is no hesita- 
tion in their reply : " In Bethlehem of 
Judaea : for thus it is written by the 
prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the 
land of Juda, art not the least among 
the princes of Juda : for out of thee 
shall come a Governor, that shall rule my 
people Israel." 2 John the Baptist or the 
aged Simeon could not have made a bet- 
ter answer. They were able to say to 
Jesus many things true, instructive, and 
useful concerning the Scriptures, the pro- 
phecies, and the prophets who " wrote of 
him." 3 He listens to them, therefore, as 

1 Mark 12 : 34; Acts 5 : 38, 39. 

2 Matt. 2 : 5, 6. 

3 John 5 : 46. 



The Child at the Passover. 93 



men placed in the seat of Moses by the 
providence of God and with the approval 
of their fellowmen. He listens to them, 
but he looks to God. The word of man 
is for him but one means of learning to 
know the Word of God. Moreover, if 
unfortunately they were mistaken in some 
particulars, since " the great are not 
always wise, neither do the aged under- 
stand judgment," 1 the child Jesus has 
his Bible, which he puts above every thing, 
and to which he subordinates every thing ; 
for he does not forget that which he has 
read in that Bible, " Wherewithal shall a 
young man cleanse his way ? by taking 
heed thereto according to thy word." 2 
And you can not doubt that the same feel- 
ing which led him to seek so eagerly the in- 
structions of the Jewish doctors led him 
to seek with still greater eagerness the in- 
structions of the Word of God. To this 

1 Job 32 : 9. 
2Ps. 119: 9. 



94 The Child at the Passover, 

pure fountain he constantly repairs to draw 
water. Methinks I see him seated by his 
mother's side, reading and reading again 
the writings of the prophets, pausing per- 
haps over the predictions that declare his 
own sufferings and his own glory, asking 
himself, it may be, what this Twenty- 
second Psalm or this Fifty-third chapter 
of Isaiah foretells concerning himself — 
passages the meaning of which is grad- 
ually disclosed to him. It is thus he is 
acquiring gradually that wisdom which is 
admired by the doctors, while they do not 
understand its origin ; it is thus, also, that 
he is preparing to repel the temptations of 
the devil in the desert, with no other 
weapon than a few citations from the 
divine Word, but citations so well chosen 
and so adapted to his purpose that with 
three strokes they totally dismount the 
battery of the enemy. That is an example 
for you to consider, my friends ; like 
Jesus at your age, feel the worth of God's 



The Child at the Passover. 95 

truth and of his Word. Seize opportuni- 
ties for hearing it; put questions in pri- 
vate to those who are able to explain to 
you its contents — to your parents, your 
teachers, and the pastors of the church. 
But above all, above all, read the Script- 
ures, search the Scriptures. It is there 
that you will find the light which shall 
enable you to answer suitably all ques- 
tions when you shall be interrogated, and 
to hold your ground firmly against all 
temptations when you shall be tempted. 
" My son, if thou Avilt receive my words, 
and hide my commandments with thee; 
so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, 
and apply thine heart to understanding; 
yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and 
liftest up thy voice for understanding ; if 
thou seekest her as silver, and searchest 
for her as for hid treasures; then shalt 
thou understand the fear of the Lord, and 
find the knowledge of God. For the Lord 
giveth wisdom : out of his mouth com- 



96 The Child at the Passover. 



eth knowledge and understanding. . . . 
Then shalt thou understand righteousness, 
and judgment, and equity ; yea, every good 
path." 1 How good that is, and how beau- 
tiful, my dear children ! You know that 
in these days every body wishes to know 
how to read ; but what do people read ? 
That coachman on his seat, what is he 
reading ? His newspaper. That laundress 
on her cart ? Her newspaper. That por- 
ter at the corner of the street? His 
newspaper. That shopwoman at her 
counter? Her newspaper. We see noth- 
ing but that in every body's hands, even 
in the hands of many children. I do not 
regard it as wrong to read one's newspa- 
per — if it is good — or to keep one's self 
acquainted with public affairs. But, chil- 
dren, there is only too much talk about 
public affairs ; they are spoken of at ran- 
dom, and particularly by children, who 
would do better for the most part not to 

1 Prov. 2 : 1-6, 9. 



The Child at the Passover. 97 

meddle with them ; every one would be a 
gainer by it. " The one thing needful " 
which Jesus Christ exhorts us to choose, 
with Mary, 1 is not public affairs, but those 
of our Father who is in heaven ; and the 
reading to which Saint Paul exhorts Tim- 
othy to give himself is not the newspaper, 
but the holy Scriptures. 2 Do you recall 
to mind that beautiful promise of David 
to those who read them assiduously : 
" Blessed is the man that walketh not in 
the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth 
in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the 
seat of the scornful. But his delight is in 
the law of the Lord ; and in his law doth he 
meditate day and night. And he shall be 
like a tree planted by the rivers of water, 
that bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; 
his leaf also shall not wither ; and whatso- 
ever he doeth shall prosper." 3 A delight- 
ful image, my dear children. Do you wish 



1 Luke 10 : 42. 

2 1 Tim. 4 : 13. 



3 Ps. 1 : 1-3. 



98 The Child at the Passover. 

to be like that tree " planted by the water," 
whose sap is vigorous, whose leaf is green, 
and the fruit ripe in its season ? Medi- 
tate, meditate, meditate, day and night, 
upon the holy Scriptures ! Do you wish 
to " prosper in whatsoever you shall do," 
to succeed in your studies, your profession, 
your business ; to be happy in marriage, in 
the family, in all your undertakings? 
Meditate, meditate, on the Holy Script- 
ures. I say, Meditate. The point is not 
to read in haste and then shut the book 
and say, I have read my chapter. You 
must pause and dwell upon that which 
you read, and lift up your hearts to God. 
Open the New Testament in this spirit 
and turn to Rom. 12 : 10, where you will 
find these words : " Be kindly affectioned 
one to another with brotherly love." 
Then say to yourself, I must be gentle 
and amiable with my brothers and sisters, 
my teachers and my parents. "In honour 
preferring one another." How many 



The Child at the Passover. 99 

times have I been jealous of my comrades ! 

0 my God, make me humble, respectful, 
inclined to take the lowest place ! You 
proceed : " Not slothful in business ; fer- 
vent in spirit ; serving the Lord." Am 

1 active, industrious, alert, religious, fer- 
vent, faithful ? One verse read in this 
spirit, which is the spirit of the child 
Jesus, is a treasure. I know well that it 
is not easy to read in this manner, either 
for the little ones or even for the great. 
In order to read thus, one must not be neg- 
ligent nor indolent, nor a trifler nor — that 
which too many of you are, my children. 
Begin this day to do better, to read your 
Bibles in this manner, since God encourages 
you thereto by so great a reward. Be of 
good courage, my children. Suppose that 
you were to rise every daj^ a half -hour — 
is that too much ? — or even a quarter of 
an hour earlier than heretofore, in order 
to read the Bible, asking God to give you 
his Holy Spirit that you may understand 



100 The Child at the Passover. 

it aright. Do not be troubled if many 
things in it appear obscure to you ; mark 
the words, and ask an explanation from 
your parents, teachers, or pastors ; but ask 
it especially from God. " Do not interpre- 
tations belong to God ? " 1 Only read 
with the heart of Jesus Christ, and the 
God of Jesus Christ will guide you ; and 
perhaps, at twelve years of age, like him, 
you will be already filled with the light of 
God and with the wisdom of God. 

In thus studying the Scriptures, my dear 
children, the child Jesus well knows his 
own desire. He wishes to prepare himself 
to do upon the earth the work which his 
Father had given him to do : " To seek and 
to save that which was lost." 2 That work 
of which he said at the end, " I have fin- 
ished the work which thou gavest me to 
do ; " 3 and of which he had said during 
the first stages of his ministry : " My 



1 Gen. 40 : 8. 

2 Luke 19 : 10. 



8 John 17 : 4. 



The Child at the Passover. 101 

meat is to do the will of him that sent me, 
and to finish his work," 1 is already occu- 
pying him at twelve years of age, and al- 
ready is he preparing for it, as we perceive 
by his answer to his mother : " Wist ye 
not that I must be about my Father's busi- 
ness ? " Jesus is an earnest, thoughtful 
child. He comprehends that life was given 
him not for his own amusement or benefit, 
but to glorify God and to do good unto 
men ; and as all his time and all his 
strength are not too much for so great an 
object, he is preparing himself for it long 
in advance. It is by serving God at twelve 
years of age that he is training himself to 
serve him at thirty. He serves him with 
a self-devotion, a self-forgetfulness which 
leads him to subordinate every thing to 
his task, not excepting his tenderest and 
most allowable affections. It is thus that 
Jesus at the age of twelve, living wholly 
for his work, commences with teaching by 

i John 4 : 34. 



102 The Child at the Passover. 

example that which he was afterwards to 
teach in words : " He that loveth father 
or mother more than me is not worthy of 
me." 1 And you, my children, why, think 
you, has God placed you in the world? 
Young as you are, you are not without 
thought sometimes respecting the future 
and respecting the manner in which you 
shall employ your life, if God prolongs it. 
What, then, do you say to yourselves at 
such times? Come, my friends, consider 
well. Do you say within yourself, How 
shall I act in order to acquire much knowl- 
edge ? or, What shall I do in order to 
distinguish myself in my profession? or, 
What shall I do in order to become rich ? 
(that is the common inquiry, is it not?); 
or, again — But no ! no one of you has 
said to himself, What shall I do that I 
may be able to eat and drink and amuse 
myself at my will? And yet these 
questions, my dear children, are not all of 

i Matt. 10 : 37. 



The Child at the Passover. 103 



them bad ; there are some of them which 
are even good ; but such are not the ques- 
tions which Jesus would have put to him- 
self in your circumstances. That which 
pre-occupies his mind is neither to enjoy 
life nor to make to himself a name : it is 
to do the work which God has given him 
to do. And you, my children, will you 
not put this question to your hearts ? 

God makes nothing in vain. He knew 
when he placed you in the world why he 
placed you in it. He has a work for you 
to do, for each one of you individually. 
I need not say that this work is not the 
same as that of Jesus. Ah ! what man, 
what angel, what created being, would 
presume to intervene, in the least possible 
degree, in the work of our redemption? 
" I, even I, am the Lord ; and beside me 
there is no saviour." 1 Nor is your work 
the same in extent as Saint Paul's ; to 
traverse the entire earth, to sow it with 

i Is. 43 : 11. 



104 The Child at the Passover. 

new churches, to turn to Christ thousands 
of souls, that is given to but one man in a 
hundred thousand, to but one man in 
millions ! To Jesus, the work of Jesus ; 
to Paul, the work of Paul; but to you, 
your work, which God has expressly pre- 
pared for you, and you for the work. 
Perhaps he is calling you to some great 
thing : to carry the gospel to the heathen, 
like the missionary Casalis ; to found a 
charitable institution, like Francke ; to re- 
create a parish, to civilize a district, like 
Oberlin. You are astonished to hear me 
say this ; but when Saul of Tarsus, when 
Jesus himself, were at your age, who 
imagined what they would one day accom- 
plish in the world ? " What manner of 
child shall this be ? " 1 Yet for the greater 
number of children, and probably for the 
majority of you, my friends, God has in 
view a task more humble and more ob- 
scure. But whether humble or glorious, 

i Lukerl : 66. 



The Child at the Passover. 105 

obscure or splendid, is of small moment 
before God. " For the Lord seeth not as 
man seeth; for man looketh on the out- 
ward appearance, but the Lord looketh on 
the heart." 1 That which renders a man 
great in his eyes is not a great task ; it is 
great faithfulness. Only be faithful, and 
you will have the joy of being " co-workers 
together with God," who will reveal to 
you day by day the path in which you 
ought to walk. But if you are not faith- 
ful, God, who never has need of us, will 
easily find means to perform without you 
that which it pleased him to do through 
you ; and you will lose your labor and his 
reward. 

What then, my friends, do you say to 
this? Whilst others are thinking only 
of their own affairs, is there some one 
among you who is saying within himself, 
As for me, I wish, like Jesus, " to be about 
my Father's business " ? My work which 

il Sam. 16: 7. 



106 The Child at the Passover. 



thou hast prepared for me, O my God, 
give me the understanding to discern it 
and the fidelity to perform it. I am 
young, I have my whole course of life 
before me, I desire to use it in order to 
glorify thy name and to do good to men ; 
only lead me, I follow thee ! Is there 
some one among you, my boys, is there 
some one among you, my daughters, who 
is now speaking thus to God within the 
heart ? I am persuaded that there are 
several, that there are many such. That 
would be so directly in unison, not only 
with the gospel written in books, but also 
with that other gospel which God has 
written in the heart of each one of us. 
What can be more consoling than to say 
to one's self, I shall pass over the earth, 
not as a noxious hornet, nor as the useless 
butterfly, but like the bee which gives its 
precious honey ; and when I come to die, 
I shall leave after me upon the earth the 
good which I have done. Yes, my children, 



The Child at the Passover. 107 

to save our souls through Jesus Christ, and 
then to do good like Jesus Christ, are the 
only worthy aims in life. While waiting 
to become men and for God to show you 
what you have to do as men, begin, my 
children, by doing the good which you can 
do as children. You can do much good 
— very quietly. Do you believe that J esus 
was not doing it habitually to all around 
him, to his brothers and sisters, to his pa- 
rents also, and to every body? Merely 
by seeing him, one was learning to trust 
in God, to deny one's self, to yield the first 
place to others, to suffer without repining, 
to believe, to love, to pray. Do likewise, 
my young friends, and let people be always 
sure of finding you, like him, employed 
about some good thing. Happy the child of 
whom it can be said, Why are you look- 
ing for him ? Do you not know where to 
find him, and in what employment ? read- 
ing in his Bible, working in his school, 
obeying his father or his mother, giving 



108 The Child at the Passover. 

• 

good advice and a good example to his lit- 
tle brothers and sisters, forgetting himself 
in trying to be of service to every one, and 
while performing his little task of to-day 
exercising himself for his great work of 
to-morrow, whatever that may be ! Yes, 
happy is that child ! Happy the family, 
happy the school, which can number many 
like him ! 

I have spoken to the children of twelve 
years, or nearly that, because that is the 
age of the child Jesus and also the age of 
the greater part of your number. But I 
see, too, those before me who are smaller, 
who are eight years of age, seven years, 
six years, and less. Are they so young 
that Jesus has nothing to teach them? 
Oh, no ! Jesus is for every one, and the 
smallest are those whom he forgets least 
of all. 1 I do not know who is the young- 
est among you; but if I knew, I would 
read to him this verse which is written 

1 Matt. 19 : 13, 14, 



The Child at the Passover. 



109 



expressly for him : " And the little 1 child 
grew, and waxed strong in spirit, being 
filled with wisdom : and the, grace of God 
was upon him." 2 Jesus was yet quite 
a little child when there was already 
observed in him something altogether 
peculiar. And what was this ? Was it 
his mind ? His witty answers, his intelli- 
gence ? That is not said. Was it a kind 
of life apart, separated from the cares, the 
sports, the joys, and the sorrows of other 
children? Nor is that said of him. This 
is all that is said: u He was filled with 
wisdom : and the grace of God was upon 
him." He was wise with that wisdom 
which makes a child fear God, obey his 
parents, respect his teachers, do good and 
shun evil; in one word, he loved God. 
The grace of God was upon him: God 
approved him, kept him, blessed him; in 
one word, God loved him. Loving God, 

1 In the French Version, it is " little" child. 

2 Luke 2 : 40. 



110 The Child at the Passover. 



beloved of God. such was Jesus ; and 
behold in him what you ought to be, 
my friends ; not one of you is too young 
for that. 

If the older children love traveling, the 
younger love stories, and I will tell you a 
story now that I believe is quite true. 

A pastor was called one day to see a lit- 
tle boy dangerously ill, whose recovery 
was not hoped for. He was seated upon 
his bed, supported by a pillow, and was 
reading in a book of hymns which he held 
in his hand : his pale, thin cheeks showed 
that he had been long sick, and yet he 
seemed to be happy. After a moment's 
conversation, the pastor said to him, " Do 
you think that you will get well ? " 

u No, sir, the doctor says that I can live 
but a few weeks longer, and he would not 
be surprised if I should die suddenly.*' 

" Are you ready to die ? " 

M Oh, yes, sir ; sometimes I feel sad at 
the thought of leaving my father and 



The Child at the Passover. Ill 

mother, but I think then that in heaven 
I shall be delivered from sin and be with 
the Saviour; and I hope that papa and 
mamma will soon come to heaven. Some- 
times I am afraid of being only too impa- 
tient to depart." 

" What makes you think that you are 
prepared to die?" 

He hesitated a moment and then said: 

"It is because Jesus Christ has said, 
' Him that cometh unto me, I will in no 
wise cast out.' I believe that I love the 
Saviour, and I desire to go and be near 
him, and to become holy." 

While the pastor was conversing with 
him, they heard little boys laughing and 
playing under the window, and the sick 
child exclaimed : — 

" Oh, how much happier I am now than 
when I was well and used to play out-of- 
doors, without thinking of God or of 
heaven ! There is not a little boy in the 
street happier than I." 



112 The Child at the Passover. 

Not only can a young child secure his 
own salvation : he can also help to save the 
souls of others. Another story to show 
this to you plainly. 

A little boy six years of age had just 
died; his father and his mother were 
weeping beside his body. A laboring- 
man, a mason, presents himself and asks 
permission to see him. At first he is 
repulsed as making an untimely visit ; 
but he insists so strongly that they con- 
clude to allow him to enter : he comes 
in, sees the child and bursts into tears. 
Perceiving the surprise of the parents, 
" You do not know," he says, " why I 
weep ; it is because God made use of this 
little child to touch my heart. One day 
I was coming down from a roof by a very 
high ladder ; this child was standing at 
the foot of the ladder. 4 Were you not 
afraid up there ? ' he said to me ; and then, 
continuing, 4 1 know why you were not 
afraid ; it is because you prayed this morn- 



The Child at the Passover. 113 



ing.' I had not prayed, but I have done 
it every day since." Could we not say of 
those two little children what Saint Luke 
says of Jesus Christ : " They were filled 
with wisdom : and the grace of God was 
upon them"? 

But if there are children younger than 
twelve years in the schools, there are also 
those that are older. To such as these, 
and to young people still older, present in 
this assembly, who can not any longer be 
always under the eyes of their mothers, 
or guided like children by teachers, what 
lesson will Jesus the youth impart? Lis- 
ten, my young friends. Concerning the 
life of Jesus, from his visit to the temple 
up to his baptism, that is to say from 
twelve years of age until thirty, we have 
only two verses; but there is much to 
learn in those two verses, and especially in 
one word which occurs in them. See if it 
will strike you as it does me. "And he 
went down with them and came to Naza- 



114 The Child at the Passover. 

reth, and was subject unto them ; but his 
mother kept all these sayings in her heart. 
And Jesus increased in wisdom and stat- 
ure, and in favour with God and man." 
Jesus did not remain stationary; the 
wisdom and the grace, which, as we have 
just seen, appeared even in his tenderest 
childhood, were continually growing and 
strengthening; thus the youthful Jesus 
completely realized in his personal history 
that beautiful language in the book of 
Proverbs : " The path of the just is as the 
shining light, that shineth more and more 
unto the perfect day." 1 A great lesson 
for you, my friends : there must be con- 
stant, unceasing advancement in goodness. 
It is true, likewise, that if one is not ad- 
vancing, he is drawing back. That is not, 
however, the word which I wish chiefly 
to commend to you ; it is this : " He was 
subject unto them" Jesus was no longer 
a child; he was approaching the age of 

i Prov. 4 : 18. 



The Child at the Passover. 115 

eighteen, twenty, or twenty-five years ; 
and yet " lie was subject unto them." 
Jesus had shown himself in the temple, 
in the midst of the doctors, clothed with 
a mission from God which he could not 
sacrifice even to his parents ; and yet " he 
was subject unto them." He had more 
wisdom and grace than any man ; he was 
the Son of God, the Saviour, and his 
parents were but sinners, who, like all 
others, had need of him in order to be 
saved ; and yet " he was subject unto 
them." After that, my friends, ought 
you or ought you not, are you willing 
or are you not willing, to be in subjection 
to your parents and your superiors ? I 
ask you this and I leave you to be the 
judges. " Honour thy father and thy 
mother! " 

If instead of living where and when he 
lived, Jesus had lived in France and in 
our days, do you believe that he would 
have been less obedient to his parents? 



116 The Child at the Passover. 

You do not dare to think it. He would, 
however, have witnessed opposite exam- 
ples and have heard opposite maxims. 
Where do we see amongst us to-day that 
obedience on the part of youth which he 
exhibited ? Go into our streets, our places 
of public resort. That band of young men 
from the schools, combining together in a 
disorderly manner, and in a body presenting 
their complaints to the National Assem- 
bly, and finally compelling the authorities 
to disperse them by force, were they 
animated by the spirit of Jesus? Were 
they obedient to their teachers, submis- 
sive to the discipline of the schools, to the 
will of their fathers and their mothers, and 
sedulous to please them? Visit our homes ; 
listen to that discussion, political, literary, 
philosophical, or, it may be, religious. 
Whose is that voice that rises above all 
others ? Who is it that expresses his 
opinion so decidedly, in language so per- 
emptory? That speaker who takes the 



The Child at the Passover. 117 

lead in the conversation, who has no 
doubts on any subject, who bluntly inter- 
rupts others as they are speaking, — who is 
he ? It is a young man (I will not even 
suppose that it can be a young girl) ; it is 
a little man, twenty years of age ; it is his 
father whom he is now interrupting ; those 
whom he is lecturing are contemporaries 
of his father, men, it may be, of ripe 
understanding, enlightened and well in- 
formed ; and who knows if there is not 
among them some aged servant of God 
who has learned to say, like good John 
Newton : " When I was young, I was sure 
of many things ; now I am sure of but 
two things — that I am a miserable sin- 
ner, and that Jesus Christ has redeemed 
me with his blood." Go out of our cities 
and search through the country. There 
is the same spirit of insubordination, as- 
suming forms more gross, and passing from 
words to deeds. Sarcastic Diogenes went 
about in the day-time with his lantern 



118 The Child at the Passover. 



in his hand, seeking for a man. Take 
your lantern, my friends, and go through 
the cities and the fields, through drawing- 
rooms and shops, through palaces and 
cottages, go and seek for filial piety and 
parental authority ; and when you shall 
have found a son of eighteen or twenty 
or twenty-five years obedient to his par- 
ents, ring out the bells of Christendom to 
proclaim to the world the discovery of 
this wonder ! 

And do you know what results from 
this state of things ? The family is the 
cradle of society. Such as a man has 
been, while young, toward his parents, 
such will he be toward his teachers, his 
pastors, toward the magistrates of the 
land and all human order and government. 
If subject to his parents in his youth, he 
will have accustomed himself to be so to 
all the different authorities which God has 
established, and which are the pillars of 
society and of the Church. Disobedient 



The Child at the Passover. 119 



and disrespectful towards his parents, he 
learns to be thus toward all his superiors. 
In the school he resists his teachers and 
neglects the precious means of instruction 
which God has placed within his reach. 
In the Church he finds it easier to crit- 
icize the pastor than to profit by his 
exhortations ; and often, alas ! he grad- 
ually absents himself from the house of 
God, and lives without any spiritual direc- 
tion or counsel whatever. In the State he 
treats authority, whatever it may be and 
whatever it may do, as an enemy, whose 
every act he regards with suspicion : there 
is not a measure which he does not cen- 
sure pitilessly, systematically ; not a func- 
tionary, however small or however great, 
from the mavor to the king or the presi- 
dent of the republic, of whom he does not 
speak without reflection, without respect, 
and without charity. But is this speaking, 
then, so great an evil ? Yes, my friends ; 
for it is written : " Thou shalt not speak 



120 The Child at the Passover. 



evil of the ruler of thy people." 1 And 
this evil is the beginning of all others. 
We ought all to know this ; memory need 
not go back very far to assure us of it. 
Men begin by speaking evil of established 
authority ; to love succeeds coldness ; to 
coldness, disaffection; to disaffection, ha- 
tred ; and hatred seizes the first opportu- 
nity which offers to pick up paving-stones 
and erect barricades. 2 . . . 

Therefore I press upon your consciences, 
my friends, this word of Saint Luke, 
of the Holy Spirit : " He was subject unto 
them." Jesus was subject. Would that I 
were able to go and speak that word to 
all classes of society, to small and great, 
to children and parents, to pupils and 
teachers, to wives and to husbands, to the 
ruled and to rulers, to mayors and to pre- 
fects, to ministers of state, and to the 
National Assembly and to the president of 

iEx. 22 : 28; Acts 23: 5. 

2 Referring to the fearful street fights in Paris with which 
French revolutions have commonly begun..— Tr. 



The Child at the Passover. 121 



the republic ; for every one ought to be 
subject to something, and all ought to 
be subject to God. 1 Do you believe, I 
asked just now, that Jesus, if he lived 
to-day and in France, instead of having 
lived at Nazareth eighteen hundred years 
ago, would be less subject to his parents 
than he was then? If possible, he would 
be more so, in order to oppose to this great 
evil of our day a more salutary example 
and a more energetic protest. That exam- 
ple, that protest, I expect from you, my 
young friends, not in words but in deeds. 
Subject to your parents, your pastors, and 
your teachers ; subject to the magistrates 
and the laws ; subject to all principalities 
and powers; show that Jesus is in your 
hearts, and let him live again in you, in 
the midst of this perverse generation, who 
mock him with their lips while denying 
him by their acts, and who appear at times 
to borrow his sacred name only the better 

iEccles.5: 8. 



122 The Child at the Passover. 



to conceal their neglect of his command- 
ments. 

I beg of you all, children and youth, 
my dear friends, to lay up in your hearts 
all that which I have just said to you. 
Ever have before your eyes the example 
of the child Jesus and strive to be like 
him. You can not do this of yourselves ; 
but he it is who will give you strength for 
it if you believe in him. Go to him as 
poor sinners, to obtain grace through his 
blood poured forth for you ; go to him as 
creatures weak and wicked, " who are not 
able of themselves to think one good 
thought." Yes, my friends, the secret of 
living like Jesus is to live with Jesus, 
through faith in Jesus. 

Fathers and mothers, you will not be 
jealous because I have reserved for your 
children all the time at my disposal on 
this special occasion. To preserve and 
strengthen the salutary impressions which 
they may have received to-day; to save 



The Child at the Passover. 123 



the precious seed, dropped into their 
young hearts from birds of the air, from 
the burning sun, and from thorns, be 
assured that it is upon you, after God, 
that I rely. They must sanctify the 
Sabbath and take part in holy convoca- 
tions; but how shall they sanctify the 
Sabbath in holy assemblies if you are not 
present there with them ? They ought to 
read, meditate, search the Scriptures ; but 
how shall they read, meditate, and search 
if you do not read, if you do not medi 
tate, if you do not search as well as they ? 
They should devote themselves to the 
work which God has prepared for them 
in the future, and become fitted for that 
by performing to-day the work of this 
present time ; but how shall they gain 
preparation for it, how shall they accom- 
plish it, if you do not set them the exam- 
ple of doing their work by doing yours 
before them? They ought to be obe- 
dient to you; but shall they be obe- 



124 The Child at the Passover. 



dient if you do not maintain parental 
authority, and if you do not cause that 
authority to be respected? Great, great 
is your responsibility ; the greatest in the 
world, because the authority which God 
has deposited in your hands is at once 
the strongest and the gentlest that exists 
upon the earth. In saying this to you, 
my brothers and sisters, I do not separate 
my condition from yours ; in exhorting 
you, I exhort myself. How guilty shall 
we be if we place ourselves between our 
children and Jesus Christ ! How guilty 
to-day, and how wretched to-morrow, at 
the day of judgment, when God shall 
divide the responsibility of our children's 
perdition between them, the devil, and 
us ! But " I am persuaded better things 
of you, though I thus speak." 1 We de- 
sire to believe in Jesus ourselves, do we 
not ? were it only to lead our children 
to faith in him; we desire to be made 
like unto Jesus, were it only that our 

iJJeb.6: 9. 



The Child at the Passover. 125 



children might resemble him ; we desire 
to live with Jesus, were it only that our 
children might live with him. Our chil- 
dren shall become our teachers in their 
turn, and perhaps parental love will 
establish in more than one heart the 
beginning of a work of grace which 
could never have been begun by the fear 
of God's judgments alone, or by grati- 
tude for his benefits alone. Oh ! what 
then shall be the joy of the last day, 
when it will be impossible to decide be- 
* tween us and our children, whether to 
them or to us can be more justly applied 
that beautiful maxim of the Saviour, " It 
is more blessed to give than to receive ; " 1 
and when they and we shall all of us 
humble ourselves together, with one heart, 
at the feet of a crucified Saviour, so that 
he who began by giving us all may end 
by receiving that for which he chiefly 
hungers and thirsts, the souls he has re- 
deemed and the hearts he has renewed, 

» Acts 20: 33. 



LIKE CHILD, LIKE MAN. 



LIKE CHILD, LIKE MAN. 



Y dear children, it is to you, and 
even to the youngest among you, 
that I address myself to-day; 
and I am going to speak as if I had only 
little boys and little girls to hear me. 
The fathers and mothers will not com- 
plain of this ; and with regard to the 
others, to whom I speak every Sunday 
in the year (and sometimes at greater 
length than they would wish), they will 
profit by this discourse quite as much as 
if it had been prepared for them, if they 
are only willing to listen in that spirit of 
a little child, which Jesus so earnestly 
recommended. Who knows the result? 
They will regret perhaps, after having 
heard me, that they are not little children 

1 Delivered at the Oratoire, Paris, March 28, 1852, at the 
service for the schools of the Reformed Church. 



130 Like Child, Like Man. 



in fact. You will see that they need con- 
solation on account of their years. Well, 
I will console them ; but I wish this festi- 
val to be yours. Try to listen to me well, 
and I will try to make myself well under- 
stood. 

Even a child makes it known by his doings 
whether his work will be pure, and whether it 
will be right. 1 — Proverbs 20 : 11. 

My dear children, Hazael had surely no 
need of being advised to listen carefully 
when the prophet Elisha foretold to him 
all that should befall him. Do you re- 
member that story? Elisha had just 
arrived at Damascus, which was to Syria 
what Paris is to France. The king of 
Syria, Benhadad, who was sick at that 
time, sent to him Hazael, one of the offi- 
cers of his court, to inquire if he should 
be healed of his disease ; for even the 
heathen regarded Elisha as a prophet 

1 In the English Version we read, " Whether his work be 
pure, and whether it be right." Either the present or the 
future tense conveys the sense of the original. — Tr. 



Like Child, Like Man. 131 

after he had healed Naaman of his lep- 
rosy. When Hazael came before Elisha 
and had executed the commission of the 
king his master, Elisha kept his eyes fixed 
upon him for a long time, and at last he 
wept. And Hazael said, "Why weepeth 
my lord?" And Elisha answered, "Be- 
cause I know the evil that thou wilt do 
unto the children of Israel : their strong 
holds wilt thou set on fire, and their 
young men wilt thou slay with the sword, 
and wilt rip up their women, and dash in 
pieces their children." To which Hazael 
having replied, " But what, is thy ser- 
vant a dog, that he should do this great 
thing?" Elisha added, "The Lord hath 
shewed me that thou shalt be king over 
Syria." The next day Hazael smothered 
Benhadad by spreading on his face a 
thick cloth dipped in water. Then he 
sat down upon Benhadad's throne in his 
stead, and committed all the wicked deeds 
which the prophet had declared to him. 



132 Like Child, Like Man. 



If I could foretell to you, as Elisha to 
Hazael, that which is to happen to you ; 
if God were to place before my eyes a 
picture of your lives, and I could say to 
you, " The Lord hath shown me " that 
you shall be rich and honored, or that you 
shall be poor and obscure ; that you shall 
attain to white hairs, or that you shall die 
young ; that you shall enjoy robust health, 
or that you shall drag about a feeble and 
suffering body ; that you shall be sur- 
rounded by a numerous family, or that 
you shall be alone in the world ; that you 
shall remain in France, or that you shall 
cross the sea and become established in 
England or even in America, — if I could 
tell you all that, you would listen to me 
with the greatest eagerness, would you 
not? But in order to know such things, 
one must be a prophet, which I am not ; 
and to say them without knowing them, 
one must be a fortune-teller, which I 
would not be for any thing in the world, 



Like Child, Like Man. 133 

knowing that the practice is an abomina- 
tion before God. 1 Besides, if I knew 
what is to befall you, I would not tell it 
you unless God should command me to 
do so, as he certainly had commanded 
Elisha. For it would be exposing you to 
great misfortunes and to great tempta- 
tions. Was it an advantage to Benhadad 
to have desired knowledge of the future, 
or to Hazael to possess such knowledge ? 
Blessed be God, my children, that he 
hath hidden from us our future lives ! 

There is, however, one thing which I 
am able to tell you in regard to the future ; 
a thing which will excite your curiosity 
less than the things I do not tell you, but 
a thing of real interest and value, and 
the only one that it is good for you to 
know. I can tell you " whether your 
work will be pure, and whether it will 
be right ; " whether you will do that work 
on the earth which God has here given 

3 Deut. 18 : 11, 12. 



164: Like Qhild, Like Man, 

you to do ; whether j^ou will do it rightly, 
without turning either to the right hand 
or to the left from the path in which God 
wishes you to walk; and whether you 
will do it purely, in a spirit well-pleasing 
in the sight of God, who " weigheth the 
spirits " and who " looketh on the heart." 
In order to know that, I have no need to 
be a prophet: I have only to see what 
you are and what you are doing at the 
present hour; for it is written in my 
text, " Even a child makes it known by 
his doings whether his work will be pure, 
and whether it will be right." 

How is it that your acts at the present 
time can truly make known what shall be 
your work, and whether you will do what 
God has given you to do ; whilst, on the 
other hand, they can not make known 
what shall be your history, and whether 
you shall be rich or poor, in good or 
bad health, live few or many years, be a 
dweller in Paris, in London, or in New 



Like Child, Like Man. 135 

York? The difference has this origin. 
Your work depends upon you alone, be- 
cause it proceeds naturally from your 
heart, as the fruit from the tree ; but your 
history is shaped by a thousand things 
not dependent on you : the country, the 
climate, the government, the commerce, 
the prevailing diseases, war, peace, every 
thing, in short, may affect your future life. 
A gardener to whom you show a seed 
will only need to look at it to tell you 
the fruit which that seed will produce if 
God gives it life, whether it be peach, 
cherry, or almond; but he can not know 
whether the weather will be favorable, 
the sun warm, the clouds full of rain, the 
soil fertile ; still less can he foresee 
whether a hostile hand, that of a bad 
child, for instance, shall come and beat 
down the fruit, or pluck up the tree while 
it is still very young. He knows the 
one thing and knows not the others, be- 
cause the fruit is in the seed and all the 



136 Like Child, Like Man. 



rest is not there. Well, children, I am 
the gardener, and your acts of to-day 
which I can look at are the seed, or, better 
still, the seed is your heart as disclosed to 
me by those acts. Knowing your heart, 
I know in advance what will be your 
work : good, if the heart is good ; bad, 
if the heart is bad ; but I do not foresee 
your history, because the " same event 
happeneth unto all," good or bad, God 
causing his sun to rise and his rain to fall 
"on the just and on the unjust." Your 
work is in your heart, and your history 
is not there. 

But perhaps you do not fully under- 
stand what I mean by the work which 
God has given you to do. I am about to 
explain this to you more clearly, and you 
will see how much more interesting it is 
than to know whether you will be king 
of Syria. 

God, my children, who placed the vine 
upon the earth to give to man "wine 



Like Child, Like Man. 137 

which rejoiceth his heart," and the oak to 
lend him its shade and to furnish him its 
precious wood, has placed us here in order 
to do good, following the example of 
Jesus Christ, the model man, "who went 
about doing good." 1 But within this 
general work, which is the same for all, 
there lies also a special work which exists 
for each one of us. Look at a band of 
reapers : they are working in the same 
field, but they are not all doing the same 
thing ; one cuts the wheat with a scythe ; 
another rakes it into a heap ; a third binds 
it in sheaves ; a fourth gathers it into 
barns. Likewise we, all of us, being 
called to do good, are not all called to do 
it in the same manner ; but God marks 
out for each one his place and his task, 
according to his wisdom : your work is 
not mine, my work is not yours; the 
work of a man is one thing, the work of 
a woman is another ; the work of a father 

1 Acts 10 : 38. 



138 Like Child, Like Man. 

of a family is one thing, that of a young 
man is another ; the work of the master 
is one, that of the servant is another ; the 
work of the teacher is one thing, another 
work belongs to the pupil ; and thus it is 
with the rest. God, who chose for each 
one of us his special work, takes care to 
arrange and adapt our faculties, our 
health, our time, our history, and even 
the duration of our lives, with reference 
to that work. Thus is there opened be- 
fore each one of us that beautiful path- 
way of good works which Saint Paul 
exhorts us to follow : " We were created 
in Christ Jesus unto good works which 
God hath before prepared 1 that we should 
walk in them." 2 You hear this. God 
creates us for the good works, and pre- 
pares the good works for us ; and then he 
says, "Walk," while urging us into the 
good road which his own hand has cleared 

1 See margin of English Version, Eph. 2 : 10.— Tr. 
2Eph. 2: 10. 



Like Child, Like Man. 139 

for us, and which we have only hence- 
forth to pursue straight on, without de- 
parting from it to the right hand or to 
the left. For we can follow it, and it is 
possible, also, not to follow it. God gives 
direction to us all, but he forces no one ; 
some persons do their work, and others — 
alas ! the greater number — do not per- 
form theirs. And for that reason, my chil- 
dren, I am so anxious to know whether 
you will do yours. 

There is but one man who has done his 
work in perfection : it is the Son of man, 
Jesus Christ. His work was to glorify 
God and to save us by shedding his blood 
upon the cross for the remission of our 
sins. This work he has so well fulfilled 
that not one action, not one word, not 
one gesture, is wanting. The law of God 
is not more exactly inscribed on the pages 
of a book than it was faithfully carried 
out in the whole life and conduct of 
Jesus Christ. Thus, when he said before 



140 Like Child, Like Man. 

his death, "I have finished the work 
which thou gavest me to do/' his own 
heart, God, and men confirm the testi- 
mony which he bears concerning himself, 
and which no one besides himself has so 
fully deserved. Yes, my children, Jesus 
Christ finished his work ; otherwise, we 
could not this day stand before God with 
his salvation in our souls, his peace in our 
hearts, and his name on our lips. Yet, 
thanks be unto him, there are also, though 
at a great distance from him, other men 
who have accomplished, not perfectly, but 
still faithfully, the work which God had 
given them to do, and who, when dying, 
have been enabled to say to God, humbly 
but tranquilly, u I have finished the work 
which thou gavest me to do." I will cite 
one of these instances ; for you love 
stories, and I love them, too, when they 
are quite true and certain, like this which 
I am going to tell you. Fictitious stories 
are of men, but true ones are of God. 



Like Child, Like Man. 141 

In an elevated valley, formed by a 
detached group of the Vosges Mountains, 
and named the Ban-de-la-Roche, there 
lived less than a hundred years since a 
small, distinct community which, though 
in the heart of Alsace and at the distance 
of only twelve leagues from Strasburg, 
had remained in an almost barbarous con- 
dition. These poor people had for houses 
only miserable cabins built in the rocks. 
They had so little desire to instruct their 
children that they obtained for school- 
masters those who were willing to under- 
take the business at the lowest price ; 
they were paid less than the wages of a 
shepherd, and the greater part of these 
teachers were unable to read readily. 
The earth was not further advanced in 
improvements than the men. Here on the 
side of a mountain was land so sloping 
that it threatened to slide down at any 
moment ; there in the plain were waters 
which either lay in stagnant pools or over- 



142 Like Child, Like Man. 



flowed the country, haying no bed to 
receive thern. You will understand the 
condition of agriculture under such cir- 
cumstances. Indeed, there was not much 
to be cultivated. The soil is too stony and 
the climate, in general, too cold to suffer 
the vine or even grain to flourish, and the 
potato, which had been introduced into 
this region in the great famine of the year 
1709 (for up to that time the people had 
lived on wild apples and pears), had com- 
pletely deteriorated, and no pains had 
been taken to improve the variety in use. 
Besides all this, there were no practicable 
roads, either communicating with the 
highway to Strasburg or even for going 
from one village to another; and in a 
country where there are no roads, ideas 
do not circulate any more freely than men 
or vehicles, and every one remains in his 
ignorance. With regard to varied indus- 
try and manufactures, they were not even 
thought of. You have already conject- 



Like Qhild, Like Man. 143 

ured that in a region so backward the 
Bible was scarcely known ; for the Bible 
does not suffer those who receive it to 
remain in such a condition. It appears 
to concern itself only about religious sub- 
jects, while in truth comprehending every 
thing : instruction, schools, industry, com- 
merce, agriculture, civilization, general 
welfare ; and therefore, children, the first 
thing that is done when men wish to keep 
the people in ignorance is to prevent them 
from reading the Bible, just like those 
wicked men who begin by putting out the 
light when they wish to commit some evil 
deed. 

This little community, which ignorance, 
rudeness, poverty, and unbelief seemed to 
have chosen as their place of refuge, 
well-nigh as if it had been an island of 
the South Seas or a tribe of Hottentots, 
was entered one day, in the year 1767, 
by Oberlin, a young pastor twenty-seven 
years of age, who accepted this humble 



144 Like Child, Like Man. 

post because other men had no desire to 
fill it. A pious and charitable heart in- 
tent on doing good, a candid and culti- 
vated mind prompt to discern the means 
to be adopted, a persistent will to carry 
those measures into execution, — these are 
the three qualities which are most neces- 
sary in order to make a man useful. 
Oberlin possessed them all in a rare 
degree. Immediately he sets himself to 
work, and aims to accomplish two things : 
to renew the hearts of the people by the 
gospel, and the country by civilization, 
following the example of Jesus Christ, 
who scatters all around him blessings both 
spiritual and temporal. On the Sabbath 
he preaches the gospel, and while pro- 
claiming the love of our heavenly Father, 
who "so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
lieveth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life," 1 he melts the hardest 

i John 3 : 16. 



Like Child, Like Man. 145 



hearts, and he makes his parishioners his 
own friends in making them the friends 
of Jesus Christ. He was even accustomed 
to call them his children, and they called 
him their father ; most of them in speak- 
ing to him said papa. Then during the 
week he sets out at their head, a pick-axe 
on his shoulder, digs ditches to receive 
the waters, raises walls to support the 
lands, opens local roads from one village 
to another, and constructs a road and a 
bridge in order to establish communica- 
tion with Strasburg. Nor is this all. He 
sends to Germany for potatoes, to restore 
this culture, and introduces better flax- 
seed from Riga in Russia, with the design 
of acclimatizing it in the Ban-de~la-Roehe ; 
he establishes a savings bank ; encourages 
industry ; sends, at his own expense, in- 
telligent young boys to Strasburg to learn 
trades and to become masons, joiners, 
glaziers, blacksmiths, and wheelwrights ; 
introduces cotton-spinning, and through 



146 Like Child, Like Man. 



his growing reputation induces the Le 
Grand family of Basle to settle in the 
country, and they establish a great manu- 
factory of silk ribbons, an industry which 
becomes a real blessing to the com- 
munity both in worldly and religious 
results, and the more extensively a bless- 
ing because it places the ribbon business 
in the homes of the people and does not 
remove the workmen from the family 
life. And after sixty years of such a 
ministry, Oberlin falls asleep at the 
age of eighty-six, surrounded by his great 
family in tears ; leaving a Christian peo- 
ple where he had found an unbelieving 
people, and a prosperous country instead 
of an uncultivated and uncivilized region. 

Do not think that all this was done 
without opposition. You know what his 
Master and ours has said: "If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself, 
and take up his cross daily, and follow 
me." 1 Oberlin, like all others, experienced 

1 Luke 9 : 23. 



Like Child, Like Man. 147 

this ; but he sought to overcome evil with 
good, 1 and had success in the end. One 
day he was privately informed that a few 
peasants, dissatisfied with his gospel and 
his counsels, had determined to surprise 
him in an out-of-the-way place and abuse 
him, in order to put an end to his reforms. 
A Sunday had been fixed upon for the 
execution of the plot. That day Oberlin 
took for the text of his morning sermon 
those words of our Lord: "Resist not 
evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on 
thy right cheek, turn to him the other 
also." 2 After the service, those who 
were in the plot were assembled in the 
house of one of their number to make 
ready their attack, when suddenly the 
door opened and Oberlin entered quite 
alone. " My friends," he said to them, 
"here am I. Your purpose is known to 
me. You wished to punish me, doubtless, 



1 Rom. 12 : 21. 

2 Matt. 5 : 39. 



.148 Like Child, Like Man. 

because you thought me guilty. Well 
then, if I have refused to submit to the 
truth which I preach to you, punish me. 
I prefer to give myself up to you, in 
order to save you from the baseness of 
making a secret attack upon me." What 
do you think those wicked men did? 
They begged his pardon, and from that 
day onward, to make him forget their 
crime, they did all they could to aid him 
in his benevolent plans. 

See in this man, my children, one who 
did his work, the work which God pre- 
pared for him, and him for it. For who 
can think that Oberlin might have had 
elsewhere something better to do than 
that which he did at Ban-de-la- Roche f or 
that another than Oberlin could have done 
better than he the work which he there 
accomplished? Go and ask his children 
who still, with a tender pride, show to 
strangers the tomb of the good Oberlin, 
if he could not say in death, "I have 



Like Child, Like Man. 149 

finished the work which thou gavest nie 
to do." 

It is not for me to do thus, one of you 
perhaps is saying ; I have not the knowl- 
edge that Oberlin possessed, nor his talents 
nor his position. My child, the question 
is not, Will you do Oberlin's, but will you 
do your work in the spirit in which Ober- 
lin performed his ? God has works adapted 
to all minds and all positions. You have 
just seen the work of a good pastor ; look 
now at the work of a poor servant woman 
who labored by his side. 

There was in Bellefosse, one of the five 
villages of Ban-de-la-Roche, a young peas- 
ant girl, scarcely fifteen years of age. 
Louisa Scheppler was so touched by Ober- 
lin's work that she asked permission to 
have her little part in it by entering into 
service in his family. From that time 
she did not leave him, and served him 
until his death, for the space of fifty 
years, never accepting any wages, wishing 



150 Like Child, Like Man. 

to be like a friend in the house without 
ceasing to be an obedient servant. She 
was so useful an assistant that it is impos- 
sible to relate the history of Oberlin's life 
without combining with it that of Louisa 
Scheppler. Not only did she execute his 
benevolent errands in every part of his 
parish, carrying in every direction advice, 
assistance, food, and remedies, but some- 
times she even gave him happy ideas 
which had not occurred to the good pas- 
tor. Thus, seeing that the peasants could 
not attend to their labor on the land and 
at the same time take care of their little 
children, she bethought herself of collect- 
ing the children in large rooms where 
pious women, with Louisa at their head, 
would watch over them, amuse and teach 
them whilst their parents were working 
in the fields. Such was the origin of our 
halls of refuge, 1 as they are now called, for 
the idea of which we are indebted to 

1 Salle8 d'asile. 



Like Child, Like Man. 151 

Oberlin, and to him it was suggested, as 
we have seen, by Louisa Scheppler. his 
servant. Nothing can more plainly show 
you what she was to her master than 
these lines in Oberlin's will: "My dear, 
dear children, I bequeath to you my faith- 
ful nurse who brought you up, the inde- 
fatigable Louisa. She has been to you 
a faithful nurse, a faithful mother and 
teacher — every thing, in short. Her zeal 
extended further: a true apostle of our 
Lord, she went into all the villages to 
which I sent her, gathering the children 
around her, instructing them in the will 
of God, teaching them to sing beautiful 
hymns, showing them in nature the works 
of Almighty God, our heavenly Father, 
praying with them, and imparting all the 
instruction of various kinds which she 
had received from me and from your 
excellent mother. The numberless diffi- 
culties which she encountered in these 
holy occupations would have discouraged 



152 Like Child, Like Man. 

multitudes; the wild character of the 
children, their provincial dialect, the bad 
roads, the inclement seasons, rocks, pools 
of water, excessive rains, icy winds, hail, 
deep snow, — none of these could keep 
her back. She sacrificed her time and 
her person to the service of God. I be- 
queath her to you; by the care which 
you shall take of her, you will show 
whether you respect the last will of your 
father." Oberlin's children wished to 
give Louisa a child's portion in the little 
fortune left by her master. She abso- 
lutely refused it ; she asked only for per- 
mission to add the name of Oberlin to 
her own, and she afterwards called herself 
Louisa Scheppler Oberlin. And, my chil- 
dren, is it not true that Louisa Scheppler 
Oberlin did her work in every way as well 
as Oberlin did his work ? Could she not, 
like him, like the Lord, have said when 
dying, "I have finished the work which 
thou gavest me to do " ? 



Like Ghild, Like Man. 153 

And you, my dear child, what is your 
work? For God has one fully prepared 
for you ; rest assured of that. Has he 
set before you a great work, like that of 
Oberlin, or a work yet greater than that 
of Oberlin, as was that of Wilberforce, 
who gave no rest to the Parliament of 
England during eighteen years, until at 
last it set at liberty the slaves that be- 
longed to England; or one greater than 
the work of Wilberforce, as was that of 
Luther, who brought out the gospel from 
under a bushel three centuries ago, and 
who emancipated one half of the Chris- 
tian world from the yoke of man and 
from the traditions of man which had 
been substituted for the authority of God 
and of the word of God? To you that 
seems impossible ; but God alone knows 
what he designs to make of each one of 
you; and if Oberlin or Wilberforce or 
Luther had been told at your age that 
which God intended to accomplish 



154 Like Child, Like Man. 

through them, they would have judged it 
equally impossible. Or has God placed 
before you a modest work, like that of 
Louisa Scheppler, or still more humble, 
perhaps, as was that of the Shepherd of 
Salisbury Plain, or of the paralytic of 
Planchamp (whose lives you have read 
in the tracts which bear their names; if 
not, read them), or of some other, re- 
specting whom nothing has been written, 
and whose life has been all hidden in God, 
without having been on that account any 
the less a blessing upon the earth? I 
know not, my good friends, nor can you 
or any man know what the work is which 
God has reserved for you ; but that is not 
the thing which it is important for you to 
know. The great thing to be known is, 
whether you will do your work, whatever 
it may be. Oh, of what great moment 
that is, my children ! For tell me in 
a word which was the more desirable for 
Oberlin, to regenerate the Ban-de-la- 



Like Child, Like Man. 155 

Roche, or to fill the world with the glory 
of his name ? And for Louisa Scheppler, 
to second Oberlin in his ministry of char- 
ity, or to live only for herself? And 
which is the more desirable life for that 
little boy or that little girl, to " enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a little season," and 
then to die, or faithfully to accomplish 
the task appointed by God, and then to 
fall asleep in the bosom of the Lord ? I 
willingly leave the answer with your own 
hearts, my friends. What a misfortune, 
had these men whom I have just named 
thought otherwise than they did ! if Ober- 
lin, Wilberforce, Luther, Louisa Schep- 
pler, had forsaken their beautiful work 
to run after the riches, the honors, and 
the pleasures of the world, as they might 
have done and as so many others have 
done ! What a misfortune, I do not say for 
the earth, for had they failed, God could 
have easily found other servants to fill their 
places; but what a misfortune for them 



156 Like Child, Like Man. 

to deprive themselves of that holy and 
blessed service in which God was well 
pleased to honor them by employing 
them ! And you, dear children, what 
a misfortune would it be for you, what 
a misfortune in time, and what a still 
greater misfortune in eternity, were you 
to go, like so many other children, alas ! 
like the greater number of children, and 
neglect the work, whatever it may be, 
which God has chosen for you, in order 
to follow your own wills and the inclina- 
tions of your own wicked hearts. Oh ! I 
can not consent to this, nor can you any 
more than I. Well then, do you wish to 
know whether you will perform your 
work ? You can know this ; for God has 
so ordered things that the question of 
curiosity, What shall be my work? can 
not be answered, and the question of 
fidelity, Shall I do my work ? is easy to be 
solved. To know whether you will do 
your work, or, as says my text, " whether 



Like Child, Like Man. 157 

your work shall be pure, and whether it 
shall be right," you have no need to in- 
quire of me or of others ; you have only 
to see what are " your doings " to-day. 
The seed becomes an oak, if it bears in 
itself to-day the germ of an oak ; and 
you will accomplish your work of to- 
morrow, of the day after, of all your life, 
if you do to-day the work of to-day : like 
seed, like tree ; like child, like man. Yes, 
my children, provided you do what you 
ought to do ; or, if not having done it 
hitherto, you begin doing it to-day, you 
can be at ease with regard to your whole 
life. Do you feel how beautiful, consol- 
ing, and admirable that is ? When one 
sees a child, one thinks always of the 
future ; it is of the present that we ought 
to think ; and in thinking of the present 
we are thinking of every thing. The 
friends of Zacharias, on seeing the child 
John, said, u What manner of child shall 
this be ? " but Zacharias, his father, was at 



158 Like Child, Like Man. 

rest in his mind, because he had heard 
the angel who announced his birth say, 
" He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, 
even from his mother's womb." This was 
enough to make it certain that this child, 
when he became a man, "should go be- 
fore the Lord, in the spirit and power of 
Elias, to make ready a people prepared 
for the Lord." 1 Your actions of to-day, 
my children, your actions of this day — 
at them you must look. Are they what 
they ought to be? All is well for to- 
morrow. Are they not so ? All is wrong. 
I know well that you may change at some 
future time, but I am sure only of those 
who to-day are that which they ought to 
be, and are doing that which they ought 
to do ; they alone, also, are sure of them- 
selves, with the grace of God, which will 
not fail them if they humbly wait for it. 
With respect to others, they can change, 
say they, at a later day. But when? but 

i Luke 1 : 17. 



Like Child, Like Man. 159 



will they be alive later ? will they be able 
later? will they be willing later? Alas! 
that which keeps them back to-day, why 
will it not hinder them later also? To- 
day, my friends, to-day, or perhaps never ! 
But the work of to-day, your work as a 
child, what is it ? That is the point in 
all this matter most needing to be thor- 
oughly understood. 

A young oak, very young though it 
is, is an oak ; a child also is a man, and 
a child's work is no other than the man's 
work taken up in childhood. To love 
God with all the heart and his neighbor 
as himself, that is the calling of the man ; 
such, then, is the child's also. " Thou 
shalt love God with all thy heart, with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Do 
you believe that the child is free from this 
holy and sweet obligation ? Ah ! I am 
very sure that you could not desire such 
wretched freedom, which would be an 
insult to all the children in the world. 



160 Like Child, Like Man. 

And whom will you love, my children, if 
you love not God who has given you all 
that you have, who has made you all that 
you are ; God the alone wise, the alone 
good, to whom David sings that beautiful 
One Hundred and Third Psalm : " Bless 
the Lord, O my soul: and all that is 
within me, bless his holy name ! Bless 
the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all 
his benefits ! " Not love him who "is 
love ; " can not one be a child, then, with- 
out having a mind that is false, a heart 
that is hard, and a soul filled with ingrati- 
tude ? Shall it be said that a child needs 
to see things, and that he can not love God 
because he does not see God? I hope 
you would readily answer that by saying 
that if you do not see him with the eyes 
of the body, you do see him with those 
of the heart : you see him in all the bless- 
ings with which he loads you, in that pure 
air which you breathe, in that limpid 
water which quenches thirst, in that 



Like Child, Like Man. 161 



wheat springing from the earth, which 
nourishes yon, in that sun which en- 
lightens and warms you, in that mother 
who presses you to her bosom. You see 
him every-where, in every thing except 
in that which is evil — that alone does 
not come from him. Do not listen to the 
language of impious and mocking men, 
my children ; but listen to God, who says 
to you, " My child, give me thy heart ; " 
and give it to him, all of it, and without 
delay : this is the first and the great com- 
mandment. And this is the second, which 
is like unto it: "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself." It is never too soon 
— believe it fully — to put this second 
commandment in practice. At all times, 
in every age of life, abundant occasions 
can be found, if they are sought, for being 
agreeable and useful to one's neighbor. 
A child, as well as a grown person, can 
find such opportunities; one may even 
say that in some respects they are more 



162 Like Child^ Like Man. 



readily found by a child than by another, 
because all hearts are open to a child, and 
the good which he does is more touching 
than if done by another person, particu- 
larly if, in order to accomplish it, he is 
obliged to take trouble on himself or to 
undergo some privation. See that little 
boy who is making the rounds of a 
drawing-room full of people, having in 
his hand his box for the poor or for mis- 
sions, shaking it from time to time to 
arouse those whose heads are turned away. 
Every one gives him something ; the 
smaller he is, the better he succeeds ; they 
would refuse me sooner than him, nor 
would I dare do what he is doing. You 
say, How can I do good ? In a thousand 
ways. You can make your parents happy, 
and that is doing good ; you can oblige 
your brothers and sisters, and that also is 
doing good ; you can set a good example 
to your companions, and that again is 
doing good. If you see your friends 



Like Child, Like Man. 163 

doing something wrong, you can turn 
them from it ; you can speak to them of 
the goodness of God, and counsel them 
also to give him their hearts. All this, 
my dear children, can not be done with- 
out encountering difficulties, without mak- 
ing sacrifices. Sometimes your good in- 
tentions will be misunderstood by others, 
and they will return you evil for good; 
sometimes they will mock you and call 
you a little saint; sometimes, perhaps, 
you will be rudely repulsed and abused. 
And what then ? You will say to your- 
selves that we are upon the earth to do 
the will of God and not our own. It is 
in order to accustom you early to the 
renouncing of your own wills that God 
has placed your parents near you and has 
said to you, " Children, obey your fathers 
and your mothers." That obedience, that 
precious obedience, prepares you, more 
than all besides, for your work to come. 
A child who is obedient to his father and 



164 Like Child, Like Man. 

his mother will be so, at a later day, to 
all his superiors: to his teachers, to his 
pastors, to magistrates, to constituted au- 
thorities. Especially at this time when 
men make sport of overthrowing all kinds 
of government where it can be done with- 
out the fear of punishment, happy is the 
child who shall give a better example, and 
who, in the midst of the general disobe- 
dience, shall find his glory in obeying and 
in being subject; a general holding his 
ground with a small band against a great 
army affords = less proof of courage than 
such a child. 

Let us imagine a child animated by this 
spirit, and let us follow him during an en- 
tire day from morning until evening. We 
will select a child who, like the most of 
you, goes to school (those who do not go 
have their school at home, for surely their 
parents do not suffer them to do nothing), 
and we will suppose that he is eight years 
of age, and that his name is Julius. Little 



Like Child, Like Man. 165 

Julius rises early, and having promptly 
and neatly finished his toilet, opens his 
little Bible, reads a chapter in it, or a few 
verses, and then kneels down and prays. 
The reading and the prayer do not last 
very long ; a half-hour, or perhaps still 
less, suffices for the whole ; we do not 
expect of a child that which is expected 
from a man ; but his heart is in it, and 
God looks at the heart. Do not think 
that this dear child does but recite prayers 
learned by heart ; no, he speaks to God ; 
he speaks of what he has to do during the 
day and of the assistance of which he has 
need ; of faults committed yesterday, and 
which he wishes to avoid to-day; of a 
temptation which he foresees and which he 
is anxious to overcome ; of his sick father 
or mother, whom God alone can heal; 
of a brother or a school-fellow, for whom 
he asks all which he asks for himself. 

This reminds me of a charming anec- 
dote of a little boy who was obliged to 



166 Like Child, Like Man, 

recite every day prayers committed to 
memory, but who, as soon as he had be- 
gun to love the Lord, had felt the need 
of adding to them prayers drawn from 
his own heart. " Mamma," said he one 
day to his mother, " there, I have said my 
prayers ; now I am going to pray." 

After a few moments spent with his 
parents and a short service of family wor- 
ship in which all are united, as I love to 
think, Julius has now set out for school. 
In going to it, he does not take the 
roundabout road which is preferred by the 
lazy ; he goes directly, promptly, and even 
gayly, having found out, young as he is, 
that there is more happiness in laboring 
than in shirking. Arrived at school, he 
puts in practice that advice of an old au- 
thor, "Do what thou doest." Wholly 
given to his work, whether he reads, 
writes, or does examples in arithmetic, 
he accomplishes each one of his tasks 
with all the carefulness of which he is 



Like Child, Like Man. 167 

capable, because he accomplishes it as 
" serving the Lord and not man." If he 
acts as monitor, he is all eyes and all ears 
to direct, encourage, and reprove, if need 
be, his school-mates who are placed under 
his supervision. Exact in discharging his 
duty, especially submissive to his teachers, 
he thus fulfills, in his small measure, the 
beautiful precept of Saint Peter, "As 
every one hath received a gift, even so 
minister the same one to another, as good 
stewards of the manifold grace of God." 1 
You think, perhaps, seeing him so studi- 
ous and so quiet, that he is a feeble, 
sluggish child, with no blood in his veins. 
Follow him out of class, and you would 
be quickly undeceived : " To every thing 
its season." When the hour of recreation 
has come, there is no pupil who puts more 
energy into his play than Julius. At 
prison-bars he runs the fastest; at ball, 
no one is more adroit; at hop-scotch, he 

1 1 Peter 4 : 10. 



168 Like Child, Like Man. 

keeps himself on one foot longer than any- 
one else ; every boy courts the pleasure 
of playing with him, he enters into each 
game so heartily. At work, the best stu- 
dent ; at play, the best comrade. Add 
to this that at home he is the best son. 

School ended, the family has its turn. 
Julius returns home with a good con- 
science, which is the first requisite for 
being happy yourselves and for making 
those about you happy. Pleasure like 
that which he shows at seeing again his 
father and mother, his brothers and sis- 
ters, is felt by each of them in seeing him 
again at home. He inquires about all 
that has taken place in the house, he 
relates what he has been doing during 
the day, what he has learnt at school, and 
what he has seen on the road. And at 
last, after a day well filled out, he goes to 
sleep in peace, having commended his 
soul to God. Thus all his days pass 
away, Sundays excepted. On Sunday he 



Like Child, Like Man. 169 



is differently occupied ; work and play- 
are all suspended; it is "the day of the 
Lord." Our little Julius sanctifies it, not 
unwillingly, but with a hearty zest. On 
that day, he doubles the time which he 
ordinarily gives to prayer and to the read- 
ing of the Bible, to which he adds some 
other good book from those that are pub- 
lished in our day for children, or perhaps 
some good paper for children, such as 
The Little Messenger of Missions or The 
Friend of Youth. 1 At the Sunday-school 
he is one of the most punctual. When 
the list of absent or tardy pupils is read 
at the end of the service, you never find 
his name there, unless he is sick ; and no 
one knows his verses better, or can give 
a better account of the preceding lesson. 
And as in a well-regulated life there is 
time for every thing, there remains to him 

1 Corresponding to The American Messenger and Child's 
Paper of the American Tract Society; and to the various 
papers for children carefully prepared hy different Chris- 
tian denominations in the United States. — Tr. 



170 Like Child, Like Man. 



much time for his family, in the midst of 
which he seeks his sweetest pastime, 
never wearying of talking with his friends, 
in winter by the fireside, in summer on a 
retired walk. He gives good counsel to 
the younger members of the family ; he 
opens his heart to his mother ; he ques- 
tions his father ; he gains information 
from them ; it may be that he has some 
good things — and some of them very 
good — to bring to their knowledge ; and 
if you could listen to his parents at night 
you might hear them saying to each other, 
God has given us a treasure in that child ! 

But Julius, do you say, is a model 
child, a nonesuch ? There will be at least 
one such in the world, my child, if you 
desire it ; and that one will be you. 
What is there impossible in that? Is it 
impossible to rise early? Is it impossible 
to read the Bible and to pray ? Impossi- 
ble to be devoted to study and docile to 
instructors? Impossible to be obedient 



Like Ghild) Like Man. 171 

to parents and obliging to brothers and 
sisters ? Impossible to learn thoroughly 
one's verses for the Sunday-school? It 
is true that no one will attain to all this 
by a single effort ; but if there is a failure 
at some point, is it impossible to rise 
again after having fallen, and to reach 
the end aimed at, little by little, though 
there be more than one fall by the way ; 
as a child, after many missteps, ends by 
learning to walk ? I hear you saying, 
All that could be done, but all that is not 
done. I say in my turn all that is not 
done in the case of an ordinary child, but 
all that is done in the case of a child who 
is a Christian. That is my position, my 
friends. A Christian child ; that is what 
you must be to give me confidence, by 
your work to-day, with regard to your 
work in time to come. A watch will not 
run if the spring is not wound up; a 
water-wheel will not turn if the water 
does not fall upon it; the mill does not 



172 Like Child, Like Man. 

move if the wind does not blow upon its 
sails ; and you can not do your work if 
you have not Jesus Christ in your hearts: 
" Examine yourselves, to see whether 
Christ be in you." Many persons, per- 
haps, are astonished to hear me speak of 
Christian children. They imagine that in 
order to be a Christian it is necessary 
to be a grown-up man or woman. This 
is a great mistake. Jesus Christ came 
into the world for the small as well as 
the great, and were a choice to be made, 
it is not the great who would be found the 
most ready to receive him ; it would be 
the little ones, for the same reason that 
a small tree is more easily bent than a 
large one. You remember well that Jesus 
Christ showed a singular love towards 
children. One might say that he came 
expressly for them. What is a Christian, 
my dear children? It is a man who be- 
lieves in Jesus Christ with that faith 
which comes from the heart and not from 



Like Child, Like Man. 173 

the head, and which leads a man to take 
hold of the gospel in earnest and put it 
in practice. And what is there to pre- 
vent a child, what is there to prevent 
you, my little friend, from believing in 
Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ came to seek 
and to save poor sinners, lost by their evil 
deeds; are not you a sinner, my child? 
God forbids lying ; have you never lied ? 
God commands : Honor thy father and 
thy mother; have you never disobeyed 
your parents ? God's will is that the 
young be in subjection to the old; have 
you failed in the respect due to your 
teachers ? God's will is that we be sober; 
have you never been gluttonous ? God's 
will is that we labor six days, and that 
we rest on the seventh day; have you 
never been idle at school, or thoughtless 
on the Sabbath? God's will is that we 
love God with all our hearts and our 
neighbor as ourselves; have you never 
been selfish, hard, unjust, violent towards 



174 Like Ohild, Like Man. 

your neighbor ? And with respect to 
God; have you truly loved him with all 
your heart ? Have you passed an entire 
day without praying, without giving him 
thanks, and without thinking of him? 
Alas ! my poor child, you have not waited 
till you were even six or seven years old 
to become guilty in all these things and 
in many others. Look at your little 
brother, scarcely two years of age, or 
perhaps but one year old : how self-willed 
he is ! how passionate he becomes ! how 
he strikes his nurse or his mother ! how 
easy it is to see that he knows when he 
is doing right and when he is doing 
wrong! Sin begins with life, my dear 
children, and if one desires to know 
whether little children have a part in 
it, like others, there is an easy method of 
ascertaining the truth. It is written : 
" Sin hath entered into the world, and 
death by sin ; " it is only necessary to see 
whether little children die like the rest of 



Like Child, Like Man. 175 



mankind. But however it may be with 
little children, you, my child, who have 
sinned knowingly and willfully, where will 
you find your pardon save beneath the 
cross of Jesus Christ? Is he not the 
" Lamb of God who taketh away the sin 
of the world " ? 1 Is he not the propitia- 
tion for our sins, and not for ours only, 
but also for the sins of the whole world ? 2 
" The blood of J esus Christ cleanseth 
from all sin," and there is no other thing 
in all the world that can cleanse you from 
the least sin; nothing, neither alms, nor 
works, nor penances, nor maceration of 
the body, nor prayers even. Where the 
blood of Jesus Christ has been applied, 
sin is blotted out ; where it has not been 
applied, sin remains forever and ever, and 
with it, my children, the wrath of God. 
To be a child will not avail ; it is a fear- 
ful thing to fall into the hands of the 



i John 1 : 29. 
n John 2: 2. 



176 Like Child, Like Man. 

living God. Oh, my young friends, "flee 
from the wrath to come " ! Children who 
hear me, does any one of you wish to be 
saved ? " To-day, if you hear his voice, 
harden not your heart." 1 Go to your 
home, fall on your knees and say to him, 
My Saviour, I know that thou didst come 
for me, too. Wash me in thy precious 
blood, and give me grace to live for thee 
and to die in thee. That prayer, be 
assured, will not be rejected. Jesus Christ 
passed through all ages of human life in 
order to save all. He is the Saviour of 
the man, he is also the Saviour of the 
child ; he is your Saviour, who laid down 
his life for you, who has asked that the 
Holy Spirit may be given you, who will 
give you strength to conquer sin, who 
will comfort you in your troubles, who 
will be to you both God and brother. 
Know and feel your happiness in having 
been born in France and not in one of 

^8.95: 7,8. 



Like Ghild) Like Man* 177 



those countries where the name of Christ 
has not come ; or in those savage islands 
where children are brought up in wicked- 
ness and vice ; in China, where daughters 
are sold by their fathers, or treated like 
slaves ; or in Otaheite, where mothers 
used to kill their children as soon as they 
were born. Realize this happiness of 
yours, and show your sense of it by giv- 
ing your heart to that God who has loved 
you so much. If there are but few Chris- 
tian children, the stronger reason is there 
for you to set a good example ; let there 
be at least one faithful Christian child, 
and be you that one. Thus, my child, 
you will make it known by "your doings" 
to-day that "your work" to come "will 
be pure and will be right." 

But if this work to come should never 
come ? If you were to die before having 
commenced it? My dear child, if you 
are to die before having begun your work, 
that will prove that what we call your 



178 Like Child, Like Man. 



work is not your work; for God, who 
knows perfectly when you are to die, has 
surely not assigned you a work on the 
earth for the time when you shall no 
longer be here. You ought to prepare 
yourself for a long life, because that may 
be granted you ; but if it is not, your 
preparation will not be lost on that ac- 
count — take heed that you do not think 
so. If you are to die young, that prepara- 
tion itself will then be your work ; it will 
be the good which you are doing to-day ; 
it will be the good example which you 
are giving to-day; it will be the joy 
which you are causing your parents to- 
day; it will be the useful words which 
you are speaking to-day ; childhood, with 
its Bible and its prayers, with its school 
and its joys, with its obedience and its 
obscurity, will be your work ; and it will 
be your work to live as a Christian child 
knows how to live, and to die as a Chris- 
tian child knows how to die. This is a 



Like Child, Like Man. 179 

wonderful thing in Jesus Christ, that he 
provides for every thing at one and the 
same time, and that he serves alike for 
living and for dying ; for a long life and 
for a short life ; for the activity of health 
and for the quiet of sickness; for pros- 
perity and for poverty ; for days of joy 
and for days of trial ; for the great and 
the small; for the strong and the weak; 
for every thing and for all men. 

Shall I tell you of a child who died 
very young, and yet whose work was 
finished? The child of whom I am 
thinking was a little girl (the girls, also, 
must have their story). A minister of 
the gospel once assembled the children 
of his parish and told them of heathen 
people : how some of them worship 
images of wood and of stone; others of 
them, animals; others, the rivers; and 
others, the sun ; and how there are among 
them wretched parents who kill their own 
children, and especially their little daugh- 



180 Like Child, Like Man. 

ters, in order to avoid the expense and 
trouble of bringing them up. During 
this narrative, he observed a pale, delicate 
little girl, whose shining eyes were fixed 
upon him, and who lost not a word of 
what he was saying. Having finished 
speaking, the pastor showed the children 
some little boxes covered with pretty 
pictures, representing missionary scenes 
among the Indians, and offered to give 
one to every child who throughout the 
year which was commencing would lay 
aside something every week to aid in 
evangelizing the heathen. Just at this 
moment he saw the little girl pass her 
arm around the neck of her father, a poor 
blacksmith, who was sitting at her side, 
as if to persuade him to ask for one for 
her. " My friend," said the pastor to him, 
u do you wish a box for your little daugh- 
ter?" The father took it, saying, "But 
I do not know whether the poor child will 
ever be able to get any thing for you." 



Like Child, Like Man. 181 

A year passed away ; the missionary meet- 
ing, in which the boxes were to be re- 
turned and opened, was held. The poor 
blacksmith did not fail to be present, but 
this time he was alone. In the course of 
the year he had lost his wife, and only 
two days before he had buried his dear 
little daughter. Weeping, he gave back 
the box to the pastor, and said to him, 
"Here is the box which you gave her. 
. . . My dear little girl asked me to give 
her one sou out of my wages every week 
in which I was pleased with her conduct ; 
the sou has never been wanting. Fifty- 
two weeks have passed; there ought to 
be fifty-two sous in the box ; the pastor 
will please count them." The minister 
counted and found fifty-five, three more 
than the number expected. The father, 
much disturbed, counted and counted 
over again; at last he lifted his hand to 
his head, exclaiming, "I do not under- 
stand it at all. My blessed child would 



182 Like Child, Like Man. 

not have taken what did not belong to 
her, even for a good work. However, the 
three sous are there ; I did not give them 
to her ; where did they come from ? 99 
He was so agitated by this that the next 
morning, when a pious lady who had 
loved his child very much, was visiting 
him, he confided his anxiety to her. M I 
believe," said the lady, "that I can re- 
lieve your mind. While visiting your 
daughter, the evening before her death, 
seeing her distressed by the fever, I asked 
her if the juice of an orange would not 
be pleasant to her; she answered, yes. 
I was just returning from making some 
purchases in the city, and having no other 
change than three sous which I had re- 
ceived at a shop, I gave them to your 
daughter to buy an orange for herself. 
I remember very well seeing the mission- 
box then on the child's bed, and re- 
gretting that I had nothing to put in it." 
"Thank God," said the father, "and 



Like Child, Like Man. 183 



may he be pleased to pardon my suspi- 
cions. I am certain the orange was not 
purchased ; my child refused that refresh- 
ment for her dying lips that she might 
put three sous more into her box." 

My dear children, that little girl did 
not talk, but she acted, and that is worth 
far more. Did she not live a Christian 
life and die a Christian death ? Was she 
not a model of piety, of charity, and of 
self-denial? And then, very young as 
she was at death, did she not do her work 
before dying ; towards those poor Indians 
whom she helped to evangelize ; towards 
the Lord whom she sought to make 
known to them ; towards her father whom 
she rendered so happy ; towards that pas- 
tor, that lady, that assembly, whom she 
edified so remarkably ; towards you whom 
she is even now edifying ? Oh, how truly 
have the " doings " of that little girl made 
it known that her " work would be pure 
and that it would be right " ! " Go ye 
and do likewise." 



184 Like Child, Like Man. 



Dear, dear children, who hear me, take 
courage ! It costs something to be a 
Christian. You have, perhaps, companions 
who will ridicule you. I am not willing 
to imagine that you have parents who 
oppose you ; but this is sometimes true. 
You will have to renounce more than one 
pleasure vaunted by the world. You may 
be called to great sacrifices for the sake of 
Jesus Christ: "Whosoever doth not bear 
his cross, and come after me, cannot be my 
disciple." 1 But the safety of your soul in 
eternity is worth all sacrifices; and even 
in this life the happiness of serving so 
good a master should suffice to console 
you. And then, if there are sacrifices in 
the Christian life, there are also great bless- 
ings even of a temporal nature. These are 
not what we ought to seek for, in seeking 
Jesus Christ ; but he gives them to us with- 
out our seeking them, and the more surely 
the less we have sought them. I told you 

* Luke 14:27. 



Like Child, Like Man. 185 

when T began, that I could know nothing 
concerning your earthly future. There is, 
however, something that I do know about 
it ; I know what Jesus Christ promised 
when he said : " Seek first the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness, and all these 
things shall be added unto you." If God 
designs to prolong your days upon the 
earth, I know, my child, — apart from ex- 
ceptional circumstances which he only can 
foresee, — that if you are attentive, stu- 
dious, and diligent (and you will be so if 
you are a Christian child), you will become 
intelligent and skillful : a dextrous arti- 
san ; an accomplished merchant : you will 
be one whose work shall prosper, according 
to that which is written in the book of 
Proverbs : " The soul of the diligent shall 
be made fat ; " 1 and I know, on the con- 
trary, that if you are idle, heedless, 
thoughtless, you will be able to do nothing 
as you ought, and during your whole life 

1 Prov. 13 : 4. 



186 Like Child, Like Man. 



will vegetate in your profession, whatever 
it may be, according to that which is also 
written in the same passage : "The soul 
of the sluggard desireth only and hath 
nothing." I know that if you are reli- 
gious, charitable, punctual in your engage- 
ments, prompt to render service (and all 
that you will be, if you are a Christian 
child), you will draw upon you the grace 
of God and the favor of men, and you 
will succeed in your undertakings, accord- 
ing to that which is written : " The gene- 
ration of the upright shall be blessed: 
wealth and riches shall be in his house." 1 
And I know, also, that if you run after 
pleasure, if you profane the Sabbath, if 
you are idle on week-days, if you deceive 
your neighbor, if you think only of 
yourself, the blessing of God will not 
rest upon you, and you will fall into 
difficulties, into want, and into indigence, 
according to that which is also written : 

iPs.112: 2,3. 



Like Child, Like Man. 187 

u Him that honoureth me, I will honour, 
and he that despiseth me shall be lightly 
esteemed." 1 I know that if your language 
is chaste, your morals pure, your life sober, 
your hours well filled, your amusements 
simple and honest (and this they will be 
if you are a Christian child), you will en- 
joy vigorous health, which is the first of 
all earthly blessings ; and I know, also, 
that if you are a trifler, or a drunkard, a 
debaucher, or given to any excess, you will 
grow old before your time, you will lose 
body and soul, you will pluck down ruin 
upon your household with your own hands, 
you will heap up suffering and shame, 
you will become a burden to society, a bur- 
den to the Church, a burden to your fam- 
ily, and you will be preparing to become a 
burden to the hospital or asylum where 
you will end your career, saying to your- 
self, that your cup of bitterness may be 
full : « Thou didst will it to be so." 

1 1 Sam. 2 : 30. 



188 Like Child, Like Man. 



Yes, my friends, in some sort you hold 
in your hands even your temporal destiny : 
and in accordance with that which you 
are to-day, you can foresee with certainty 
whether you will have repose, success, 
health, ease, and honor in the world. In 
any event, and this is the essential point, 
we can foresee " whether your work shall 
be pure and whether it shall be right." 
Oh ! profit, profit by the great privilege 
which your age confers on you. Placed 
at the entrance of your career, it is still 
in your power to take the right course 
for your entire future lives : what a 
privilege, my children, what a privilege 
is this! 

If you do not know it to be so, there 
are those here who, as I am persuaded, 
know it well. Ah ! my children, how 
quickly should I convince you what hap- 
piness is yours, if I could lay open before 
you the heart of such a man, or of such 
a woman, who is now listening to me 



Like Child, Like Man. 189 



with you. Having passed through the 
greater part of that career on which 
you have just entered, such an one now 
takes a painful survey of himself, while 
thinking of you and of the good fortune 
which is yours in having the warnings 
which you hear, whilst there is yet time to 
heed them. You have often desired to be 
older than you are; some of you would 
fain be ten and some would be twenty, and 
some thirty, years older than you now are, 
in order to be men. And some who are 
men and women would wish (a desire 
much more rational than yours) to cut off 
from their lives, some of them ten and 
some twenty, and some thirty years, and 
some still more than that, in order to 
become children again like you. Happy 
little boy ! says that wretched father, who 
by his irregular life, or by his scandalous 
conduct, has plunged his wife into despair, 
his children into want, and himself into 
want and despair with them ; if I were to- 



190 Like Child, Like Man. 



day in his place, I would have only to do 
what Mr. Monod advises me, in order to 
avoid all the misfortunes that have be- 
fallen me. I should be to-day a good 
father, esteemed in society, happy in my 
family, at peace with my wife, an example 
to my children ; I should have children, 
orderly, obedient, grateful, who would 
love me. Happy child ! why am I not 
in his place ? Happy little girl ! says that 
woman, worn out with the world, loving 
the world and loved by the world (if that 
exchange of selfish sentiments can be called 
love !), but neither giving nor receiving 
happiness ; with her mind empty, her heart 
empty, or filled only with regret and remorse. 
If I were in her place, I would not have 
done what I have done. I would not 
have sought my rest in the world, which 
wearies me and exhausts me and weighs 
me down; but from which I have no 
longer the strength to separate myself. I 
would not have accepted the hand of a 



Like Child, Like Man. 191 



man without piety and without fixed prin- 
ciples ; we would not be traveling separate 
ways ! my daughters would not be going 
to one church and my sons to another — 
if they go to any : and I would not be 
feeling myself isolated in the midst of the 
world, alone in the bosom of my family. 
Happy little girl ! why am I not in her 
place ? Happy child ! says a third, who 
has wasted his time and his fine abilities, 
and who is dragging on a miserable exist- 
ence without profit to any one ; were I in 
his place, I should not be what I am. I 
should not be ignorant, useless to others, 
useless to myself, incapable of any con- 
tinuous study. How many useful things 
I might have done ! How many good 
works I might have accomplished ! How 
many services I might have rendered to 
others ! How many sufferings I might 
have relieved ! Happy child ! why am 
not I in his place ? 

And this, my friends, is but a small part 



192 Like Child, Like Man. 



of what I hear. I could not, I would not, 
I dare not tell you all. So many faults, so 
many sorrows, so many sins, so many vices, 
so many sicknesses, so many crimes, per- 
haps, are there that my adult hearers 
could have spared themselves, and from 
which you can escape by listening to this 
gospel and putting it in practice ! Were 
you even listening to it for the first time 
and for the last, this single opportunity 
might alone suffice. Preserve in your 
memory and in your hearts this day 
which has here convened us. Act in 
such a manner that during the whole 
course of your childhood you can remem- 
ber this day with joy, as a day on which 
you made a covenant with the God of 
Jesus Christ for life and for death! So 
act that during the entire course of your 
career on earth, you may be able to re- 
member this day with joy, as a day in which 
you plighted yourselves to walk in the 
right way, with a step firm, resolute, per- 



Like Child, Like Man. 198 



severing, and to pursue that way during 
all of life, never turning aside from it. So 
act that in the day when you shall appear 
before the judgment seat, you may remem- 
ber this day with joy, as a day on which 
you fled from the wrath to come and on 
which you took the first step in that Chris- 
tian faith and that Christian life whose 
precious fruits you shall gather throughout 
all eternity. 

But you, my adult hearers, who regret 
the past, and who contemplate these dear 
children with an interest that is mingled 
with tender sympathy and a painful long- 
ing, the past is past, but the Saviour is 
present, salvation is present, consolation is 
present, reparation is present : it is not too 
late. It was my duty to tell these dear 
children that which I read in your hearts, 
in order to spare them the bitterness of 
being obliged to say the same things to 
themselves some day ; but far from me be 
the thought of sacrificing my older au- 



194 Like Child, Like Man. 

dience to my young hearers ! I must say 
to you, whoever you are, that I do not 
despair of you, of any one among you. 
No, it is not too late to do your work ; 
it is not too late to do your work 
as well as you could have done it, or 
even better than you could have done it, 
at any other time. Faith accomplishes 
more than to protect the present ; it guar- 
antees the future ; it does more than guar- 
antee the future : it retrieves the past ; 
and here is its triumph, and here the sub- 
lime foolishness of the gospel, and its im- 
possibility rendered possible. Yes : faith 
even retrieves the past ; for faith seizes 
upon God ; and God, in whom are united 
all times, the past, the present, and the 
future ; 1 God in whom (we may add) 
there is neither present, nor past, nor 
future, gathers together in one all times, 
to save them all in himself; and, in that 
ever-present eternity of his grace, 2 in 

iHeb.13: 8. 
2 2 Peter 3 : 8. 



Like Child, Like Man. 195 

which he anticipates the future, because 
" He it is who calleth the things that are 
not as though they were." He makes the 
past also to live again, because he it is 
"who quickeneth the dead." Such as 
you are, with what of strength remains to 
you, with that which is measured out to 
you of life, only believe, and you shall 
discover for yourselves, in the very midst 
of your doubts, of your errors, and your 
unbeliefs, — irreparable according to man, 
but according to God more jbhan reparable, 
susceptible of being turned into good, — 
hidden resources for doing the work which 
God is now giving you to do. Your work 
is the avowal of your humiliating expe- 
rience, which will be profitable to others, 
and which to-day is profitable to these 
very children ; and your work is all that 
good which is still held in reserve for you 
to accomplish, if you ask of God open eyes 
and faithful hearts; a good so much the 
more real, so much the more profound, so 



196 Like Child, Like Man. 

much the more spiritual, as you have been 
prepared to do it by minds more contrite, 
by hearts more broken. Go forward, then, 
in faith, in hope, in love, and there is noth- 
ing which shall prevent your yet taking 
your place beside Mary Magdalen, beside 
Zacchaeus, beside the thief who repented on 
the cross. 

To you, fathers and mothers, I speak 
these words ; to you more than all others 
— to you in a twofold sense ; to you, for 
yourselves, and to you, for those others, 
who are yourselves according to the flesh, 
and who will be, probably, according to the 
spirit. They will be that which you shall 
make them, after God. I have but one hour 
in which to speak to them. You have a 
whole life-time. I appeal to your con- 
sciences, in the presence of God, and of 
the gospel ; in your intercourse with them, 
second the work that I have done this day ; 
second it, and destroy it not ! 



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